


When I See Her Again

by Jade_II



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Library Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:02:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_II/pseuds/Jade_II
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s difficult, you know, like remembering a dream.”</p><p>“Clara, you’ve got to try.”</p><p>“Why? What’s so important about this library planet?”</p><p>The Doctor looked at his tea, cooling in River’s favourite teacup, and swallowed.</p><p>“Because,” he said, “I think you may have saved me in one place where you really shouldn’t have.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [red_b_rackham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/gifts).



> Thanks to my artist, Red, whose wonderful artwork for this fic can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941880), and, as ever, to Charina for the beta.
> 
> This is just a little spin on that wonderful theory sparked by what appears to be Clara in the Library in The Name of the Doctor :)

The first time the Doctor slept after Trenzalore was – well, it was a long time after Trenzalore.

 

And it wasn’t exactly restful.

 

He dreamed of the Weeping Angels and the Library and of losing Amy and Rory and River, one by one, over and over, repeatedly and inevitably, of darkness and of sparkling electricity and of death.

 

And a girl in red.

 

He woke with a start and scrambled from his bed to run down the corridor and knock repeatedly on Clara’s door. After what seemed like an eternity, he heard grumbling noises from inside and the door creaked open.

 

“If we’re not dying,” Clara said croakily, running her free hand over her eyes, “I’m going to kill you.” She removed her hand, only to slap it back over her eyes again a moment later. “Why are you naked?”

 

“I sleep naked,” he explained hastily. “Listen, Clara, how much do you remember about your other selves? The ones who were created when you jumped into my timestream?”

 

“Do we have to do this now? With no clothes on? Really?”

 

“What? You’ve got clothes on!”

 

“Okay.” Clara sighed, removing her hand but keeping her eyes resolutely shut. “What I’ve got on is my nightie. Because I was asleep. It doesn’t count as ‘clothes’. And what you’ve got on is _nothing_ , and I’ve just learned far more about Time Lord anatomy than I ever wanted to know.”

 

“Clara, Time Lords and humans look just the same from the outsi—“

 

“Exactly. Didn’t need to know, thanks. Right.” She shook her head, tilted it as far upwards as it would go, and looked at him. “Is this a life or death situation?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Okay. Get dressed, make some tea, and I’ll join you in a minute.”

 

“But—“

 

“Thank you, goodbye!” Gazing resolutely at the ceiling, she slammed the door in his face.

 

Muttering to himself about humans, the Doctor turned and made his way to the wardrobe. He got dressed as quickly as he could and then ran to put the kettle on.

 

He was just pouring the tea when Clara finally appeared in the kitchen.

 

“So,” she said without preamble, grabbing the teacup he had intended for himself and throwing herself into a chair. “Why have you woken me up in the middle of the night?”

 

“It’s not the middle of the night,” he told her, contemplating the remaining teacup before deciding to swap it for a different one. “We’re parked in the time vortex, it’s never night.”

 

“I was asleep,” Clara declared. “Therefore it’s the middle of the night. Even you were asleep, so please don’t tell me you dragged me out of bed to comfort you because of some Time Lord nightmare.”

 

The Doctor paused. “Well…”

 

“Oh God.” She shook her head. “You did, didn’t you?”

 

“Clara.” He sat down opposite. “This is important. Really, really important.” Something in his tone must have told her how serious he was, because she stopped rolling her eyes and listened. “What do you know about the Library?”

 

“The TARDIS library?” She shrugged. “It’s big and dark with a lot of books, and these bottles that talk at you when you open—“

 

“No, not the TARDIS library.” He looked at her intently. “The Library. The planet.”

 

“There’s a library planet? Noth…” The word died in her throat, and her expression changed. “But she did.”

 

“Tell me.”

 

“She… I don’t know.” Clara’s eyebrows were knitted in concentration. “It’s difficult, you know, like remembering a dream.”

 

“Clara, you’ve got to try.”

 

“Why? What’s so important about this library planet?”

 

The Doctor looked at his tea, cooling in River’s favourite teacup, and swallowed.

 

“Because,” he said, “I think you may have saved me in one place where you really shouldn’t have.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“So, Professor River Song.” The Doctor snapped his diary shut with a grin. “What have you got for me this time?”

 

Something in her eyes told him this one wasn’t going to be all fun and games, despite the twitch of her lips in response. She turned back to the dig site, beckoning him and Clara to follow. “You’d better come and see for yourself.”

 

River led them through the twilight, taking them on a short trek across the packed dirt next to a shallow stream towards the pit lit by flaming torches a short distance away. Clara looked from one of them to the other, frowning. “Why so ominous?” she demanded.

 

“Much more fun this way,” River said cheerfully. The Doctor doubted Clara caught the hint of a shiver in her voice, and he tried to conceal one in his.

 

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Clara Oswald?” he demanded, clapping her on the shoulder.

 

“Must’ve left it in the TARDIS,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

 

The pit, the Doctor saw as they drew closer, was about the size of three coffins lying side by side and the right depth for a grave as well. He mentally sized up the three of them standing on its edge and hoped that wasn’t a bad omen.

 

“Cormac!” River was yelling, distracting him momentarily from a closer inspection.

 

“Here, Professor!” a voice replied from behind some sad looking bushes close by. “Just a mo’!”

 

River rolled her eyes, a gesture the Doctor always found odd when it wasn’t directed at him, and threw him her torch. “Take a look,” she told him grimly, gesturing at the ladder leading downwards.

 

He really wasn’t sure that he wanted to, but he wasn’t about to admit that to either of them.

 

The ladder was rickety and he jumped the last couple of feet, landing unsteadily in the dirt. The ground was soft from the digging that had been taking place, all a shade of dark brown that looked black in the dim light.

 

“Behind you,” River called from above – an instruction, not a warning.

 

The Doctor turned around, stepping forward and— _ouch_ , stumbling over something unexpectedly hard, which sent him careening into the side of the pit and made Clara snort with laughter.

 

Tellingly, River did not.

 

Dusting himself off, the Doctor shone the torch on the thing that had tripped him.

 

It was a hand.

 

Not a human hand, but under the circumstances he wasn’t sure that was much reassurance.

 

It was smooth, grey stone, sticking up out of the soil as though it were grasping at something.

 

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked, though of course he knew the answer.

 

“Afraid so.”

 

“What do you think it is?” Clara demanded, kneeling down by the side of the pit for a closer look.

 

“A Weeping Angel,” the Doctor replied, shining the torch around the rest of the pit before climbing back up.

 

“At least eight Weeping Angels, actually,” River said, reaching for his hand as he got to the top of the ladder. He could feel her pulse beating through her wrist, a tad too quickly. “That’s just the top one.”

 

“Were you trying to kill me?” he demanded, “sending me down there with them?”

 

River shrugged. “I don’t think they could hurt you. Yet.”

 

At that moment the bushes rustled and a young man came jogging to their side, apologising profusely as he did so. “Sorry, sorry Professor, sorry, stomach acting up again!”

 

Sighing, River shook her head and grabbed the scanner from his hand. “Cormac, I did explain what we’re dealing with, didn’t I?”

 

“Yes, but—“

 

“Go on.” She nodded her head at the circle of tents not far away. “Tell Kim she can relieve you.”

 

Cormac cringed. “She won’t like it, Professor. We’re archaeologists, we’re not supposed to have to do guard duty in the middle of the night!”

 

“You can stand guard or you can die, Cormac.” She pilfered another piece of equipment from his utility belt. “Your choice.”

 

“Yes, Professor.” Grimacing, he ran back to the tent.

 

Clara raised her hand. “Could you explain what we’re dealing with again, please? Why are you freaking out over some buried statues?”

 

“They’re not just statues,” River said shortly, throwing a stony gaze into the pit.

 

“They’re only statues when you’re looking at them,” the Doctor continued. “Unobserved, they turn into—“

 

“Monsters,” River finished for him.

 

“Deadly,” he added, probably unnecessarily. The look on Clara’s face told him the message had got through.

 

“Creepy,” she commented, staring at the stone hand. Then, “Wasn’t there only one of them before?”

 

The Doctor shone the torch into the pit – sure enough, there was another hand reaching out of the ground.

 

“Yep,” River confirmed. “Until we took our eyes off it.” She looked up at the Doctor. “They’re starting to move faster. The loosened earth will let them escape, soon enough. Any ideas?”

 

“Yes, one very good one.” He clapped his hands and grabbed a nearby shovel. “Bury them again and run away.”

 

“And let someone else dig them up a hundred years from now instead, someone who doesn’t know what they are?”

 

“What else can we do, River?”

 

“Something!” She raised her voice, steel in her eyes. “I’m not letting them win, Doctor.”

 

He stepped forward, gently taking her hand in his. “Win what?”

 

“Hate to interrupt,” Clara said, “but I agree with the wife. Why leave someone else a nasty surprise when we can deal with it?”

 

“Because I don’t know that we can!” the Doctor replied, slightly more vehemently than he had intended. He turned to face Clara, lowering his voice. “Clara, the last time I met an Angel, they…” He swallowed, tightening his grasp on the shovel.

 

“They what?” she prodded, quite mercilessly in his opinion.

 

“They killed my parents,” River said quietly.

 

Clara looked at her, gaping. River did not meet her eyes. “I’m sorry,” the younger woman said eventually, rather deflated.

 

River shrugged, but the Doctor could tell it was an effort. “They were okay,” she said. “In the end.”

 

“How…?”

 

“I’ll explain later,” the Doctor cut in. “Okay. Right. Do something.” He stuck the shovel back in the earth. “Do what?”

 

“Just the question I was going to ask myself!” A rather chipper young blonde lady strode up to them, adopting a mock-military stance at the edge of the pit, and then abandoning it just as quickly to stare openly at the Doctor and Clara. “Who are they?” she whispered to River.

 

“With any luck, the people who are going to save our lives,” River replied, snapping out of her slump immediately. “Doctor, I need to show you something.”

 

He found himself being grabbed by the hand and dragged towards one of the tents, only vaguely aware of Clara’s protests in the distance.

 

“Is this an important thing?” she called, shuffling her feet indecisively. “Do I want to come too? Or is it a sex thing?” The exaggerated shudder she made when she said that left the Doctor quite happy to leave her behind with the question unanswered.

 

Besides, he wasn’t quite sure of the answer himself. You never could tell, with River.

 

Her tent was the outermost and the largest, of course, and she ducked through the flap in its side without waiting to see if he’d follow. He did, of course – he always did.

 

The inside was cramped, despite its size; a camp bed and several crates took up most of the space, lit only by a flickering oil lamp dangling from a hook in the ceiling. One of these crates was stood on end and serving as a sort of table; River grabbed a portable computer off of it and sat down on the bed.

 

“These are the images we’ve got so far using our density scanners,” she said without preamble, not even waiting for him to sit down next to her. “Eight Angels, but this one,” she pointed, “the bottom one, is right on the edge of the scanners’ range. There could be any number underneath.”

 

“What are they doing here?” the Doctor asked, studying the images. The Angels were all upright in the pit, arms extended upwards.

 

“That’s the thing. What does it look like to you?”

 

“They’re trying to climb out.”

 

“More than that.” River cycled through the images until she reached the bottom one again, the eighth one. This one was a little blurry, but it was clear immediately what she meant.

 

“It’s looking down,” the Doctor surmised. “The others are focussed on getting back out onto the surface, but that one…”

 

River nodded slowly. “What’s it looking at? Another Angel, or…?”

 

“Or is it running from something,” the Doctor finished for her.

 

“Anything that has the Angels running should probably stay buried, but…” she bit her lip.

 

“Then how do we get the Angels out and leave whatever it is down there?” Hesitating, the Doctor ventured a hand on her knee and she looked up at him, making a good but ultimately futile effort to hide the look in her eyes. “These aren’t the same Angels, you know,” he said softly.

 

“I really don’t care,” she replied, the volume of her voice matching his but the tone all the more fierce for it.

 

“River…” He wrapped his other arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and pressing a kiss to the side of her head. She sighed, leaning into him, and he brought his fingers up to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. “What do you plan to do with them, anyway, once you’ve dug them up?”

 

“Weld them together and throw them back in,” she said viciously. “And hope whatever’s down there swallows them whole.”

 

The Doctor’s response to that was interrupted by a shriek from somewhere nearby, for which he was inexplicably grateful. He and River rose as one, she throwing the computer on the bed and reaching for the weapon holstered at her side, he fumbling for his screwdriver.

 

“That sounded like Cormac,” River said uneasily, hurrying towards the flap of the tent.

 

They ducked outside to find what must have been River’s whole team descending warily on Cormac’s tent, including, to River’s clear annoyance, Kim.

 

“Does nobody understand that the Angels have to be watched _at all times_?” she exclaimed, marching up to the other woman. “Get back to your post!”

 

Kim glared. “You may be my superior, Professor Song, but you’re not my drillmaster. You have no right to talk to me like that when all I was doing was running to help a friend. Besides, I left the short girl behind.”

 

Not one to enjoy being chastised, River glared right back. The Doctor tried to diffuse the situation. “Ah, see, Clara will keep an eye on them! Clara will make sure everything’s just—“

 

The sound of a scream from the direction of the pit made his hearts sink down towards his feet. “…fine,” he finished weakly, already breaking into a run. “Clara!”

 

He almost ran into her in the dark, having left the torch in River’s tent. She was slowly backing away from the pit, and she yelled when he put his hand on her shoulder.

 

“I blinked,” she said shakily, only looking up for a moment to determine his identity before returning her gaze to the ladder, staring intently as though she expected something to follow her. “I just _blinked_ , and—“

 

“Just blinking is enough,” the Doctor said grimly, cautiously approaching the pit. He expected to find the Angel in the act of climbing the ladder, or maybe several more emerging from the dirt.

 

Instead, he found a skeleton.

 

Half-submerged in the earth, it was still clearly an Angel, the delicate stone bones of its wings stretched out behind it. It was one of the most terrifying things he’d ever seen, and that was definitely saying something.

 

“Doctor!” River ran up behind him, out of breath. “Cormac’s dead, he—dear God.” She stopped short beside him, staring down at the Angel.

 

“Like this?” the Doctor asked quietly, gesturing at the remains of the monster.

 

“Yes.” River nodded. “Doctor…”

 

“Vashta Nerada,” the Doctor surmised, stepping away.

 

“Vashta what?” said Clara from behind him. He had almost forgotten she was there.

 

“Living shadows,” he explained. “Carnivorous.” Turning briefly to River, he began to make his way back towards the tents, grateful when they both followed him without question. “What’s the most powerful light source you’ve got?” he demanded.

 

“There’s a floodlight, but it’s broken.” She glanced at his screwdriver. “Could be fixable.”

 

“Show me.” He turned to Clara as River sprinted on ahead. “Get into that tent and make sure no one leaves. All the lights need to be on, all the people need to be in the light, and make sure no one’s shadow crosses anyone else’s.”

 

“Or what?” Not defiance, for once – she had a genuine, slightly terrified need to know.

 

The Doctor grimaced, hesitating. “Or we all end up like Cormac.”

 

Leaving her dithering by the entrance to Cormac’s tent – not for too long, he hoped – the Doctor followed River back into her own, where she had upended another crate and was kneeling on the floor prying open the back of a large lamp, holding the torch between her teeth.

 

She looked up when he came in but did not speak, preoccupied as she was. He knelt down next to her and she removed the torch from her mouth, pressing it into his hand instead.

 

“Just a moment,” she muttered, fiddling with the casing.

 

He did her best to light her work but the cover was stuck fast, only yielding slightly when he used the screwdriver on it. She held it up and they both took hold to try and pull it apart; eventually the lamp separated from the casing with a loud crack and they both fell backwards, River cursing when she scrambled back up to examine the lamp’s inner workings.

 

“It’s fried,” she declared shortly, tossing it back onto the floor. “Nothing we can do.”

 

The Doctor picked it up anyway and tinkered with it for a moment, but it was clear that she was right. He stood, kicking it away. “Oh well. Back to square one.”

 

River accepted a hand up. “I really hate square one.”

 

He bopped her on the nose. “No, you don’t.”

 

Sighing, she couldn’t quite help the smile that twitched at her lips. “Come on,” she said, rolling her eyes in an attempt to hide it. “We’d better get back to the others.”

 

Squeezing his hand in hers for just a moment, River stepped away and reached for the flap of the tent.

 

She started so badly when she pulled it aside that she almost knocked him off his feet with the force of her leaping backwards.

 

There was an Angel outside.

 

“It’s not attacking,” the Doctor whispered. The flap had fallen closed again but he was sure of what he had seen. “It’s running. Looking for somewhere to hide.”

 

River’s hand was on her gun. “It’s come to the wrong place.”

 

“It can’t come in as long as we keep our eyes open.”

 

“I’m more worried about us getting out.”

 

A scrabbling sound from the other side of the tent made them both tense, their gazes still firmly on the flap of the tent.

 

“Another one?” River said, still unblinking.

 

The Doctor risked a glance at her. “I’ll go and check.”

 

She nodded, raising her gun, and the Doctor shone the torch around looking for the source of the noise. Manoeuvring through the cramped confines of the tent, he spotted it out of the corner of his eye first. Forced to look away to get closer, when he finally got a good look there was a whole arm on the floor of the tent, in the process of clawing its way under the bottom. The fingertips of a second hand were just visible between the floor and the canvas wall.

 

“Another one,” he confirmed.

 

“Of course it is,” River said resignedly. He heard her moving, careful footsteps crackling on the plastic sheeting of the floor. “Come towards the bed. Don’t take your eyes off it.”

 

“Yes, dear.” The Doctor swallowed. Backing slowly away, he didn’t notice the small crate on the floor behind him and promptly tripped over it, crashing backwards into several more crates and knocking them over and on top of him.

 

When he managed to scramble to his feet, one hand on his battered head and the other gripping the torch, the Angel had managed to get a whole wing inside the tent.

 

River was rolling her eyes; he could tell without even looking at her. “A few more steps, sweetie, hurry up.” Vague shuffling noises were coming from the direction of the bed, now, as though she was searching for something underneath it. A muttered “Ha!” confirmed this suspicion, and when the backs of his legs finally bumped up against the mattress River kicked another crate over just to his right and set a large folding mirror up on top of it, positioned so that they could still keep an eye on the two Angels they already knew about on either side, but had the entire wall of the tent behind them visible in the glass.

 

“There,” she said, exhaling in momentary relief. She caught his eyes in the reflection. “That’s the best view we can hope for, I think.”

 

He would have praised her ingenuity, but… “Where did you get that from?” he demanded instead. It shouldn’t have surprised him after all this time, but somehow it still did.

 

He kind of liked that.

 

River pouted. “Got to look my best when I invite my husband on a death-defying adventure, haven’t I?”

 

“Death-defying sounds good,” he conceded. “Any suggestions?”

 

“No. You?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh.” She nodded, sitting back on the end of the bed with her eyes still firmly fixed on the mirror, positioning herself precisely so that she could still see the two Angels they had already spotted in her peripheral vision. “Oh well.”

 

“Oh well?” The Doctor sat beside her, throwing up his hands. “That’s it?”

 

“Well, if you haven’t got a plan either.” River shrugged.

 

“So we’re just going to sit here and wait to die?”

 

The hint of a twinkle appeared in her eyes. “I never said that.”

 

“What?” Her growing grin suddenly conveyed her meaning, and the Doctor saw his own eyes widen in the mirror. “Really? _Now?_ River!”

 

“Well.” She shrugged again, unrepentant. “If they’re going to get us anyway, I don’t see why not.”

 

“But—” The Doctor squeaked involuntarily, watching in the mirror as his wife’s hand covered his crotch and her grin turned _wicked_.

 

“Somebody doth protest too much,” she murmured, resting her chin on his shoulder and squeezing the only part of his body which was definitely not protesting at all.

 

“They might not even kill us,” he pointed out as steadily as he could, glancing at the second Angel, who could just be seen through the gaps between the crates. “They could just send us back in time.”

 

River nodded, her expression unchanged. “Or the Vashta Nerada could tear all the flesh from our bones in the space of half a second.”

 

“And what if they do, while we’re in the middle of—” River’s teeth suddenly on his neck made him moan despite himself, cutting himself off for a moment before he persevered, “Whoever finds our bones will know exactly what we were doing.”

 

River grinned against his skin, shifting to climb to her knees behind him. “It would give Clara a good laugh.”

 

“I think she would prefer to find us _not dead_.”

 

Moving her hand to dip underneath his waistband and brush her fingers against him, River gave a hum of approval when she found him more than responsive. “I’d say you were pretty alive right now.” She leaned against him, pressing her chest against his back and open-mouthed kisses down his neck, her gaze still locked with his in the mirror.

 

It was all rather too much to resist any more.

 

His hand found its way to the back of her head of its own accord, tangling in her hair, and he saw her smile soften as she leaned into his touch, clearly fighting the urge to let her eyes flutter shut. He wanted to kiss her, to pull her mouth down and press it urgently to his own, but the Angels on either side would swoop in in an instant if they both looked away. He captured her free hand in his instead, pressing kisses to each knuckle as he watched her watching him.

 

“You’re easy to persuade today,” she remarked, using her other hand to untuck his shirt from his trousers.

 

“Easy?” he protested, reaching behind him to brush his fingers against the backs of her thighs and push underneath the legs of her shorts, feeling goosepimples sprout on her skin.

 

“Perhaps I’ve been seeing too much of your younger self,” she remarked, running her hands under his shirt and over his stomach. “He takes some persuading even when we’re not in mortal peril.” Her hand dipped lower again, reminding him very clearly of the kind of persuasion she was talking about.

 

The Doctor swallowed. “He enjoys every minute, though.”

 

River’s reflection winked at him. “Oh, I _know_.”

 

Her fingers were all over him now, stroking his hips and his buttocks and coming around again to scratch gently at his testicles. He gasped when she did that and her grin widened before she attacked his neck again, breaking eye contact and leaving him to watch the Angels as she bit and licked at his skin, the little moans of pleasure escaping her lips as she did so making it almost impossible for him to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head in surrender.

 

“River,” he said raspily.

 

“Mmhmm?” She shimmied back momentarily to push him to his feet and pull his trousers and underwear down, just enough for his erection to spring free. River made an appreciative noise, and then she was guiding him back onto the bed and climbing in front of him, shoving her shorts down out of the way as she did so.

 

The Doctor stood up behind her, grabbing her roughly and pulling her against him, glancing quickly to either side to check on the Angels.

 

“They’ve moved,” he observed, although he found he wasn’t able to care as much as he should.

 

River looked too, her hair bouncing and sticking against her sweat-slicked neck as she turned her head. Both Angels were fully inside the tent now, both half-turned towards them with arms outstretched – attacking, now, perhaps hoping to gain strength to fight whatever they were running from. “Oh well,” she sighed. “We’d better make sure they’re entertained.”

 

She grabbed his hands and guided one underneath her shirt, where he shoved her bra aside to cup her breast; the other she brought lower, pressing his fingers against her clit and moaning sinfully.

 

“Eyes open, dear,” he reminded her, leaning in to lick the shell of her ear; she responded by pressing both of his hands harder against her body, looking up to meet his gaze again.

 

“Yes, sweetie,” she said demurely – or it would have sounded demure, if he couldn’t see the gleam in her eyes and the self-satisfied smirk on her lips.

 

“River Song, if you get us sent back in time—“

 

“You’ll do what?” she countered, leaning into him and hooking her foot around his leg, stroking slowly up and down and making all the little hairs under his trouser leg stand on end and tingle. “At least we’ll be alive.”

 

“And I’m really not sure I like them _watching_ us,” he added, glancing again from one Angel to the other. They hadn’t moved this time, thankfully, but they still looked awfully bloodthirsty.

 

“ _I_ like watching us,” River countered, catching his eye again in the mirror as she reached behind her to wrap her fingers around his length, brushing her thumb over the slickness at its tip and dragging it gently down across her tailbone.

 

The Doctor swallowed, eyes fixated for a moment on her parted lips as she exhaled with satisfaction.

 

She did have a point.

 

“This way,” he said, pulling her backwards towards the bed with hands still on her breast and between her legs, making her moan loudly and throw her head back as she let him guide her.

 

“Focus, River,” he whispered in her ear, and he used the moment’s respite when she brought her head back up to squeeze his burning eyes shut – oh, blessed relief – and bite down hard where her neck met her shoulder, humming appreciatively when she moaned still louder and looking back up after a moment to check on her, only to have her meet his eyes with a predatory gleam and shove him backwards onto the bed, all the while staring ahead at the monsters trying and failing to interrupt.

 

If anything interrupted now, he had a feeling she was going to be very upset, he mused as he climbed to his knees in the blankets and pulled River back to sit in front of him, smoothing the stray wisps of hair away from her neck and running his tongue over the red mark he had left there, watching her reflection over her shoulder and finding it quite difficult to shift his focus even momentarily to the two grey shapes in the corners of his eyes. River moved then, obscuring his vision completely as she climbed backwards to position herself on all fours in front of him, nudging him insistently with her buttocks and pleading with her eyes when he met them again. He ran his hands down from her shoulders across her back to rest on her bare hips, and his eyes fluttered shut for just an instant when they bucked against him again. When he opened them he found that River must have closed her eyes as well, at least briefly.

 

The two Angels were looking straight at them now, and the expressions on their faces were _vicious_.

 

“River…” he said uncertainly.

 

“Just get inside me, sweetie,” she moaned, shaking her head against any further protest.

 

“Exhibitionist,” he muttered. That only made her moan louder, and when she grew impatient and brought her hand up to rub at her clit the Doctor swallowed again and batted it away, and her noise of protest turned abruptly to one of satisfaction when he finally gave in to her demands and buried himself inside her.

 

Keeping his eyes open in that moment was a chore, and he managed it only by moving again straight away, not allowing either of them the moment to adjust that he usually liked to prolong, just to hear her beg him to move. The Angels stood there watching, not able to stop even if they wanted to. Leaning forward and watching them just as keenly, the Doctor pushed more of River’s hair away from her neck, leaning in still further until he could smell her shampoo and all the sweat she was working up that it couldn’t quite mask.

 

That combination was probably his favourite smell in the universe. He grinned at the thought, smirking up at the Angels.

 

“Just think how much they must be hating this – they’re so close and we’re not even afraid of them,” he said, his voice gruff behind her ear.

 

River laughed, a breathy sound punctuated by a gasp when he reached between her legs to pinch her clit. “What better way to say _fuck you_ ,” she agreed, her voice unsteady as he picked up the pace.

 

“Quite.” He looked from one Angel to the other, trying to read whatever was lurking beyond the viciousness in their expressions. There was something, he was sure. Something unsettling.

 

But he was a bit busy right now. As long as he kept his eyes on them, they could wait.

 

River, on the other hand, was getting impatient.

 

“ _Harder_ ,” she insisted, pushing back against him more forcibly. His grip tightened on her waist automatically and he fought the urge to blink, to close his eyes and lose himself in the moment – although really he felt like he was just putting off the inevitable. There were five more Angels out there, after all, who knew where, not to mention the Vashta Nerada. Their chances of survival were really not great.

 

He did as he was told, and moved faster.

 

She was close now, he could tell – he could always tell; the way her breathing hitched in her throat, the way her movements became jerkier and more desperate, the way her eyes started to roll back into her head—

 

“River,” he warned, tearing his gaze back up from her face in the mirror to the rather less attractive faces of the Angels.

 

She cried out loudly, falling forward onto her elbows and pressing her forehead into the mattress, her whole face obscured by her hair, and although he would definitely prefer to see her expression right now rather than the cold grey ones he had to focus on, he couldn’t deny that there was a certain thrill in this.

 

Because River was more important than their threats. Always. Even if he died proving it.

 

“Your turn,” River gasped, pushing herself back up and arching her back, shaking her hair out of her face and locking eyes with him again in the mirror.

 

Oh, he could get lost in those eyes.

 

Grinning at his sudden stupor, River bucked up against him again, reminding him with a jolt of what he was doing. “Come for me, sweetie,” she commanded croakily, lifting her gaze to take in the Angels.

 

Finally allowing his eyes to fall shut, the Doctor swallowed, feeling her slick skin against his palms and her muscles still spasming around him. “Yes dear,” he replied, picking up the pace once more. The sudden freedom to put his eyes wherever he wanted had him opening them again quickly, looking down appreciatively at where her body me his, travelling up along the curve of her spine to the hair sticking to her back and bouncing in time with his movements, until his gaze landed again on the reflection of her face in the mirror, and he saw the smug way she was looking at the Angels, and she winked without moving her eyes but he knew it was for him, and he was undone in an instant.

 

He didn’t think he could possibly love her any more than he did just now, this mad, reckless, magnificent woman who had held his hearts in the palms of her hands ever since the first time he’d met her, even if he hadn’t realised it at the time. He didn’t even care right now if they died or not – he was too caught up in her splendour.

 

Breathing heavily, the Doctor leaned forward to press kisses to her neck and into her hair, River’s smile in the mirror his only objective for a moment before he pulled away and warily pulled up his trousers, throwing a glance around the room as he did so. Everything still seemed to be the way it had been, the two Angels kept at bay just now by River’s vigilant stare, and so he crawled forward again until his face was next to hers and he could, he discovered if he managed it very carefully, kiss her.

 

Keeping watch on the Angel behind the crates, he positioned himself so that River could still see the one who had got in through the flap, and pressed his mouth against hers.

 

A sigh escaped from their lips – his or hers, he couldn’t tell – and he was barely aware of a scuffling sound just out of sight before the stone hand of a third Angel touched his arm and everything went black.


	2. II

“Tell me about her,” Clara said, sipping her tea. It must be cold by now, the Doctor thought – they’d been sitting there for just over fifty-three minutes. “How did you meet? I only know about… the end.”

 

“Her end,” the Doctor corrected absently, fiddling with the handle of River’s teacup. What used to be River’s teacup. “My beginning.”

 

Clara frowned. “Explain.”

 

Sighing, he met her eyes briefly and gave a little shrug. “It was the usual story, really. Boy meets girl. Girl dies horribly to save him. Boy meets girl again, and again, is fascinated… falls in love. Girl meets boy. Girl kills boy, twice. Boy marries girl on top of a pyramid in an aborted timeline. They spend many happy years together, and then… her death catches up with him. He has to say goodbye. Doesn’t expect to ever see her again.” The Doctor swallowed. “But then… then he meets you, and you save him, over and over again. And if you hadn’t helped her to save me then, she might still be alive. I would have sacrificed myself instead.”

 

He had to restrain himself from gripping the teacup too tightly, lest he break it. He was trying to rein himself in, to keep his hope from transforming into premature joy, just in case… well. Just in case.

 

“But then you would have died,” Clara said. “I saved you all those times because if you had died, millions of others would too.”

 

“Ah,” he said, holding up a finger. “But I might not have. River had no chance, but I – with a little bit – well alright, a lot of luck…” He tried to fight the grin spreading across his features. “I could have regenerated.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

She almost had him.

 

River flattened herself against a tree, watching her quarry. He was some way away, jogging along the frozen path by the side of the forest and looking warily over his shoulder in completely the wrong direction every couple of feet. She didn’t have a clear shot through the trees, but she knew where that path was heading and, more importantly, how scarily narrow it became on the icy mountainside around the bend.

 

Moving quickly, River made her way up through the forest in as straight a line as she could, doing her best not to make any noise that he might deem suspicious. She really didn’t know much about him, or how much experience he might have in these things – only that he had broken into her office, stolen several of her most prized archaeological artefacts and disappeared into the past, clearly hoping that she wouldn’t follow.

 

Ha. Fat chance.

 

Setting her jaw, River climbed right to the edge to the forest. She was at the top of a steep incline, with the thief on the path winding its way over the slope halfway down. He hadn’t spotted her, so she shimmied down and hid behind a rock outcropping, listening to his footsteps crunching in the snow.

 

When she stepped out in front of him he started and almost fell to his death in shock. River grabbed him quickly before he could tumble off the path – he wasn’t getting away that easily.

 

“You know what I want,” she told him, hiding her mirth at the look on his face. The bastard was terrified.

 

“I h-haven’t got them,” he stuttered, glancing downwards and squeezing his eyes shut.

 

River shook him, noting with satisfaction that he kept shaking even when she stopped. “Liar.”

 

“I—” He swallowed. “Fine, fine, okay, I’ll—”

 

He cut himself off, shaking his head.

 

River shook him again. “You can’t win this. Just hand them over and I won’t hurt you.” She grinned. “Much.”

 

But he wouldn’t stop shaking his head. He was doing it faster, now. Unnaturally so.

 

River let go of him, staring.

 

And then he stopped, and he wasn’t the same person any more.

 

“Can’t win, eh?” said the now shorter, blond man in front of her. “That’s funny, ‘cause I think I just—” He stopped, focusing on her for the first time. “Who are you?”

 

“I’m River Song,” she said, flexing the fingers of her gun hand. Could she draw quickly enough at such short range? She had no idea how quick his reflexes might be, but somehow she thought they might be pretty good.

 

“ _You_ should not be here.” He stepped closer, closing the small gap between them and scrutinising her like something unpleasant he’d found on the underside of his shoe. “I’m the Master, and you should be _me_.”

 

River tried to hide the chills that went down her spine – unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

 

“You’ve heard of me,” the Master surmised. He seemed inordinately pleased, and River decided that was not a good sign.

 

She went for her gun.

 

He batted it out of her hand without blinking.

 

They stood staring at each other as it bounced down the mountainside.

 

Well, shit.

 

If she didn’t get out of this, River had a strong feeling that she was going to die.

 

And that would be a bit of a downer.

 

He didn’t have a weapon. Neither did she, but that… might be fixable.

 

River leapt off the path, and rolled.

 

He was coming after her, she knew, but she couldn’t think about that right now if she wanted to live. She bumped painfully over a rock and just managed to avoid tumbling headlong into a tree, scanning the ground downslope for any sign of her gun.

 

She had a rough idea of where it had gone but, she was sure, so did he.

 

The incline grew a little less steep farther down and she came up against a narrow, ice-covered trail, the impact leaving her breathless for longer than she would have liked as she struggled to her feet and watched him do the same. Taking a precious moment to get her bearings, River took in the trail and the surrounding trees, looking for any sign of her weapon.

 

Everything was dusted with fresh snow, glittering in the sunlight and disturbed in two erratic lines down the mountainside where she and the Master had tumbled through it.

 

He was standing as well now, watching her speculatively.

 

Then, abruptly, he was running straight for her.

 

She tried to dodge him but he anticipated it, launching himself at her and pulling her with him off the side of the path and down the next steep section of the slope, the trees here growing closer together and battering them painfully as they fell.

 

One particularly wide tree suddenly halted their descent and River found herself pinned to the ground underneath the Master, looking up into his not-quite-sane eyes and wondering just how the hell she was going to get out of this one.

 

“Who _are_ you?” he demanded again, shaking her.

 

River opened her mouth to reply, only for it to be filled with snow, the impact having knocked a small avalanche loose from the branches above.

 

The Master jumped up instinctively, trying to shake the snow off, and River clambered to her feet as well, shaking her head to get the stuff out of her eyes.

 

She had been shielded from most of the snow by his body, and so she had her wits about her again just a split second before he did.

 

She used that time to grab him by the head and bash it repeatedly against the frozen tree trunk.

 

The snow under their feet was stained red by the time she was done, but he was definitely dead.

 

River collapsed next to him, breathing heavily.

 

He didn’t seem to be regenerating. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

 

When she had caught her breath she searched him. He was still wearing her ill-fated thief’s clothes and still carried all his possessions – including, she noted with grim satisfaction, the ones that were in fact hers. She took them back, and she stole his coat for good measure. It wasn’t as though he would be needing it again.

 

Burying him in the snow took considerable time and effort and left her fingers and toes numb from the cold, but she felt it to be necessary. When she was done, and she’d cleaned up all the blood stains as best she could, River set off back up the hill, in search of her gun and, more importantly, an explanation.

 

 

The Doctor wasn’t hard to find once she had pieced together what had happened.

 

The television in an empty chalet, together with the very uniform figures skiing exuberantly down the distant slopes, told her most of the story. Her scanner, once she had an idea of what to look for, told her the rest, and she quickly pinpointed the source of the phenomenon – a house in London.

 

Of course. It was always London.

 

 

Her vortex manipulator dropped her a couple of streets away – which, she realised belatedly, was not in fact that smart. Everyone everywhere was the Master, right down to the little old granny on the mobility scooter tearing down the pavement. Fortunately most of them were indoors watching others celebrate and show off on the telly, but still, the hallucinogenic lipstick was sorely depleted by the time she reached her destination.

 

River hesitated, her fingers curled around the handle of one of the mansion’s side doors.

 

Something was wrong. Something beyond the sudden arrival of the Master race.

 

She didn’t know what it was, but the dread settling deep in her gut told her it was bad.

 

She looked up, and she saw Gallifrey in the sky.

 

Just for a moment – and then the door opened, almost hitting her in the face and knocking her aside as two dozen people came streaming through it and out onto the lawn, where they were joined by more, all of them panicking and none of them appearing to have any idea what to do about it.

 

None of them appeared to be the Master, either.

 

Time to get in there.

 

Hurrying through the door and against the current of people still trickling out, it didn’t take River long to find out where the action was – she glimpsed the Doctor, the tension in his frame palpable ever from a distance, with what must be the real Master; and there were others, she sensed with a shiver, just out of sight – but something held her back, something just around the corner, only not quite literally…

 

“The TARDIS,” she breathed. “What has he gone and done with you this time?”

 

“You won’t find it!” said a voice behind her, shaking slightly but all the more determined for it. Then, as she turned, “Who are you?”

 

“I’m River Song,” she said to the gentleman who was, she discovered, pointing a rather fierce finger at her. “Who are you?”

 

The man hesitated before replying. “Wilfred Mott. Friend of the Doctor. Are you?”

 

“Mr Mott!” she replied, genuinely pleased to meet the man. She nodded and turned again, hand outstretched to probe the air. “Yes, I’m a friend.” Something invisible to the eye nudged at her fingertips. “Ah,” she said, and the TARDIS materialised in front of her.

 

“You…” Wilf swallowed. “How did you do that? The Doctor did this special parking thing, to hide it from the Master…”

 

“I doubt either of them are paying attention to us right now,” River remarked, pushing open the door. “But perhaps she can give us some clues as to what’s going on.”

 

Wilf followed her inside a tad gingerly and she went to the controls, pulling all the external readouts together on the monitor to give her the big picture.

 

And it was a big, big picture, and she didn’t like it one bit.

 

“Oh dear,” she said, momentarily at a loss.

 

“Bad is, it?” said Wilfred.

 

“You could say that.”

 

“Very bad?”

 

“End of the universe bad.”

 

“Oh.”

 

She turned to look at him. “Any ideas, Wilfred Mott?”

 

He looked back uncertainly. “Well, the Doctor will fix it, won’t he? He usually does.”

 

River shrugged, studying the readings again. That was true enough.

 

“Then again… he did say he was going to die.”

 

River set her jaw – that was where they were then, was it? She should have suspected as much. “Not if I can help it.”

 

“Can you?” Wilf said hopefully.

 

“I’ll see what I can do.” She frowned, tapping the screen. “That nuclear booth is going to be flooded with radiation soon if we don’t do anything about it – and _they’re_ not likely to, I think they’re far too distracted with whatever Time Lord argument they’re having. And there’s somebody trapped in there.”

 

“I’ll go and let him out,” Wilf said determinedly, already turning on his heel.

 

“That’s not going to improve the situation,” River said grimly, grabbing him by the arm to stop him.

 

“But—“

 

“Just a minute,” River insisted, stepping away from the console to pace up and down in front of it. “Let me think.”

 

Wilf swallowed and shut up, watching her nervously. After a moment he began bouncing on the balls of his feet, the tension radiating off of him and trying to wriggle its way into her bones as well.

 

River shook her head, choosing a corridor at random and striding out of the control room.

 

Her footsteps echoed loudly on the floor as she walked, wondering if she should take the TARDIS somewhere else while she did so, to take the pressure off and give her some time to analyse the problem. There must be a solution, to both the Time Lord Armageddon and the smaller issue of the man in the radioactive box. It was just a question of…

 

River paused, frowning. Something at the corner of her eye was trying to get her attention.

 

Turning, she found the door to the wardrobe open right beside her.

 

She was sure there hadn’t been a door there before. And the wardrobe was usually next to the garage.

 

“What are you trying to tell me, dear?” she murmured to the TARDIS, brushing her fingers over the doorframe as she stepped inside. “Do I need to dress for the apocalypse?”

 

An electric shock made her yank her fingers back with a hiss, shaking them and scowling at the ship’s reaction. “Alright then,” she said evenly, curling and uncurling her stinging digits. “Give me something to go on.”

 

She waited for a moment for a more helpful response, but none was forthcoming.

 

Sighing, she ventured farther into the room.

 

The ship’s wardrobe was a wonder all on its own, and normally she would not have stalked through it with such impatience. She found something new and wonderful every time she came in here, and had been known only to come out when she was hungry – the Doctor complained about that, often – but right now she was trying to prevent the end of the world, and the TARDIS was being difficult about it. She was a temperamental old thing, sometimes.

 

So River walked past racks of gorgeous dresses without sparing them a glance, past aisles of shoes without trying them on, and even past a few of the Doctor’s hats without shooting them to bits – except for one, but it was atrocious and its destruction was definitely for its own good, not to mention his.

 

Nothing leapt out at her as being of particular use in her current situation.

 

“Some kind of clue would be nice!” she called, pulling open a drawer at random. It was full of bowties.

 

That was when something fell on her.

 

She thought at first that it was a person, and automatically rolled out from underneath it and aimed her gun – but some poking and prodding and a boot to its chest that compressed it to a thickness of a few centimetres proved it to be empty.

 

River grabbed the spacesuit by the shoulder and pulled it up to cast a critical eye over it.

 

“Hmm,” she said reluctantly. “Alright. Maybe.”

 

One of the boots fell down after it, hitting her on the head.

 

“Alright,” she complained, pulling the other boot down from the high shelf before it could do the same. “I get the message.”

 

Then she sighed and dragged the suit back to the control room.

 

“I hope this means the Doctor is taking care of the bigger picture!” she exclaimed as she went. She looked again at the spacesuit and continued more quietly, “I always said I didn’t want to die in one of these.”

 

“Ah! Miss Song!” Wilfred jumped up from his nervous perch on the jump seat as soon as she entered the room. “Any luck?”

 

“I don’t know if that’s what I’d call it,” River replied grimly, dropping the spacesuit unceremoniously on the floor and hurrying to the control panel. The Time Lords were still arguing, good. No end of the world yet.

 

She fired up the engines and Wilf looked up apprehensively at the time rotor. “Are we going somewhere?”

 

“Just for a moment,” she explained, nodding over her shoulder at the spacesuit. “I need at least five minutes to get into that thing, and I’m not sure that the universe is going to last that long.”

 

He looked completely baffled, bless him. “So you can save the universe as long as you’re wearing a spacesuit.”

 

River sighed. She had been trying not to think about that.

 

“No,” she told him. “I can save one stranger in a nuclear booth. Maybe. I’m afraid the saving the universe is up to the Doctor.”

 

Funnily enough, this seemed to comfort him. “Oh,” he said. “Well. That’s alright then, isn’t it?”

 

River took a deep breath and grabbed her boots. “Let’s hope so.”

 

 

None of them noticed the TARDIS materialising in the next room.

 

They were all a bit distracted by the Time Lords disappearing back to where they came from, admittedly, but once they’d done that River almost didn’t have time to intervene before the Doctor went to open the door to let the poor man – as much as evil minions could be poor, at any rate – out of the death trap that the booth was about to turn into. He was so convinced he was going to die that even her hand on his arm almost didn’t stop him.

 

Well. Almost. But then his brain kicked into gear and he frowned at her. “What are you wearing that for?”

 

River rolled her eyes, resisting the urge to hit him over the head with the helmet she held under her arm. She straightened his bowtie instead. “What do you think, Doctor?”

 

His eyes widened. “No. No no no no no, you can’t.”

 

“I think you’ll find that I can,” she replied.

 

“The radiation in there is twice what that suit is built to withstand!”

 

“Which is a lot more than your complete _lack_ of suit can withstand, Doctor.”

 

“You’ll die!”

 

“And you won’t?” she said pointedly.

 

“I think I might,” said a small voice from the other booth.

 

They both looked over to see the rather pathetic young man raising his hand. He swallowed and put it down again under the strength of their combined glare, and River decided to don her helmet and use the distraction to push past the Doctor and slip into the empty booth beside him.

 

The freed young man breathed a very audible sigh of relief, flung open the door and fled the room.

 

The Doctor turned to look at River, an expression of horror on his face.

 

“What have you done?” he breathed.

 

“Saved him,” she said absently, checking the readings on her suit – the radiation levels were climbing rapidly, sure enough. “And you as well, so don’t be ungrateful.”

 

“But that was _my job_. River, I was supposed to die here.”

 

“There’s no such thing as fate. Time can be rewritten.” She cocked an eyebrow, though she wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it out through the faceplate. “Besides which, there’s still plenty of time for me to kill you when I get out of here.”

 

He leaned against the door, watching her with a pained expression. “If. If you get out.”

 

She shrugged dismissively, studying her wrist panel. Warning lights were flashing now. “I’m sure to get out, sweetie. The question is how long I’ll last after that.”

 

The Doctor shook his head vehemently and banged his fist on the glass in frustration. “It should have been me.”

 

She couldn’t look at him any more – the display showed the radiation levels evening out, and for some reason that made her more apprehensive than just watching them continue to rise. Was that it? Might she make it? She didn’t think the TARDIS would have shown her the suit if it wasn’t going to help, but…

 

Warning lights were lighting up everywhere now, on her wrist panel, inside her helmet – even the neural relay, reflected in the glass door, was flashing red. The temperature in the suit began to rise and she found herself gasping for air, feeling dizzy with the lack of oxygen—

 

The door fell open and she collapsed on the floor in front of the Doctor.

 

Two pairs of hands immediately pulled her back to her feet, dragging her towards the TARDIS. Once inside she was left on the floor, vaguely aware of running footsteps and, moments later, the ship dematerialising.

 

A few seconds of silence and then the Doctor’s face was in front of her own, saying something she couldn’t make out – _comm system must be fried_ , said a drowsy voice in the back of her head – and then his screwdriver was in front of her eyes and she heard the hiss of the helmet’s seal being released, and he pulled it off her head and oh, _air._

She was actually on the verge of fainting with relief, but the Doctor was yanking her gloves off and pulling her upright. “We’ve got to get you out of this suit,” he said, frantically divesting her of her boots. “Right now.”

 

“Not in the mood, sweetie,” she murmured, struggling to keep her eyes open. “Maybe later.”

 

He froze, frowning – and then, blushing, tugged at her sleeve. “I think it’s going to explode.”

 

“If it’s that urgent you can take care of it yourself,” she said sleepily.

 

“The suit, River!” he yelled. “Your suit is going to explode and I would rather not have bits of archaeologist splattered all over my control room, so please, _help me_ to get you out of it!”

 

“…Oh.”

 

Her limbs didn’t want to cooperate with her even when she concentrated, but with the Doctor doing most of the work they eventually managed to strip her of the overloading spacesuit. Shoving her out of the room, he sealed the door tight behind them and led her away down the corridor.

 

“Will she be okay?” River asked. Her head was clearing a little bit now, but her legs were still shaky.

 

“We’ll soon find out,” the Doctor said grimly. He pushed open the door to the medical bay and helped her to sit on the bed. A quick glance at the scanner and some of the tension left his body – good news then, she deduced.

 

“Where’s Wilf?” she asked abruptly, sitting up straight.

 

“Left him behind,” the Doctor replied, turning to fetch a glass of water. He sat down beside her, pressing it into her hand. “Didn’t want to be responsible for blowing up Donna’s grandad.”

 

She nodded, taking a sip of the blessed cool drink. “I hope you thanked him.”

 

“Not properly.” He grinned. “But I’ve got a plan.”

 

“Does it involve hats?” she queried.

 

The Doctor blinked, taken aback. “No, but now that you mention it—”

 

“Just ‘no’ would be the correct answer, sweetie.” She nodded. “All right.”

 

The TARDIS gave a violent lurch just then and River clutched at the Doctor instinctively, spilling half her water down his front.

 

She was about to apologise but he got to his feet, ignoring her, and frowned.

 

“Was that the explosion?” she asked, following as he hurried back into the corridor.

 

“Probably,” he said, breaking into a run. “Bigger than I thought.”

 

They reached the door to the control room to find it still sealed, and the Doctor hit it fruitlessly with both hands. “Come on!” he yelled. “Let me in! I can help!”

 

“She’s probably venting the radiation, sweetie,” River said. “She’s not going to let us in if it’s not safe.”

 

Her words only seemed to frustrate him more, and he slammed his fist on the door again.

 

“You know she doesn’t like it when you hit her,” River warned.

 

He turned to look at her and then, sighing heavily, leaned back against the door. “How do you know these things?” he said wearily.

 

She was saved having to answer with _spoilers_ by the door sliding open behind him and causing him to fall unceremoniously backwards into the room.

 

The room which was quite impressively on fire.

 

“Oh,” the Doctor said, blinking up at her from where he had landed on his back. “Oh dear.”

 

“She let us in,” River pointed out. She reached down to give him a hand up, hiding just how grateful she was when he didn’t put too much weight on it. “That means we can help. Come on.”

 

“Right, right, right.” He ran to the console, jumping around looking at different readings while River tried to find the fire extinguisher. “This is _bad_. Bad, bad, bad… the kitchen’s on the helter-skelter, the library’s in the swimming pool, the console room is on fire… Oh!” He looked up. “And we’re crashing.”

 

Her head snapped around. “What did you say?”

 

The Doctor blinked, uncomprehending. “Lots of stuff – bad, scary stuff – which part?”

 

Running to the console herself and pushing him out of the way, River checked the readings again. The console room was on fire, the library was in the swimming pool and they were crashing… where? A quick calculation gave her an estimated destination.

 

Leadworth, 1996.

 

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” she said to herself. Then, turning, “I have to go.”

 

He stared at her, astonished. “What?”

 

“I need to leave,” she repeated, walking across the room. “Right now.”

 

“River! You can’t leave me in a burning TARDIS!”

 

“Afraid I can.” With a little wave, she typed the coordinates for her house in the 51st century into her vortex manipulator and pulled open the door.

 

“You can’t _jump out of a burning TARDIS!_ ” He was sounding more horrified by the second, bless him.

 

“Don’t worry, sweetie.” She blew him a kiss. “Nothing I haven’t done before.” And she leapt.

 

The TARDIS lurched at just that moment and she looked up to see the Doctor hanging out of the doorway, only holding on by the tips of his fingers. Unfortunately she didn’t think she had time to reset the coordinates and go and help him before ending up as a messy splat mark on the streets of London below, so she activated the manipulator and hoped he was well on his way to Leadworth.

 

 

When she arrived back home she hadn’t ceased to exist. She took that as a good sign, showered, slept for eleven hours and went to finish reading up on the Meezyne Temple.


	3. III

“Wrong one?” Clara asked archly, hand on her hip as he high-tailed it back into the TARDIS, slamming the doors behind him.

“Wrong one,” he confirmed, running for the console. “About to die horribly to save my sixth incarnation, didn’t want to stay and watch.”

“Oh, lovely.” She sighed. “How many is that now?”

“Twelve.”

“I’m really not sure I like seeing myself die over and over again.”

“I know, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to save River.”

Clara’s eyes softened. “I know.”

The Doctor pulled a lever, and the search went on.

* * *

“Ouch,” said River from underneath him.

She pulled away from him just slightly, and he could see her eyes and her lips glistening in the dark.

Not pitch black, then.

The Doctor climbed carefully to his feet, pressing his hands to his knees where he’d hit them upon falling to the ground when they’d arrived in mid-air. He stretched, grimacing, and reached down to give her a hand.

“Please tell me you’ve still got the torch,” she said, righting her clothing as she stood and dusted herself off.

He checked his pockets. “Ah!” he declared. “Yes!”

“Anything else?”

“Screwdriver.” Nothing else of note. “You?”

River pulled her gun from its holster. “Firepower,” she said grimly, stepping forward.

The torchlight revealed them to be in a roughly rectangular room with a high wooden ceiling, covered in tiny, intricate carvings of figures and calligraphy. The room was sparsely but beautifully decorated with tall statues of vaguely humanoid form arranged in an octagon, and the floor was paved with cold stone slabs, with benches made from a similar stone arranged in a circle in the middle.

“The Meezyne Temple,” River breathed excitedly. She looked at him. “That means we’ve been sent back in time at least two hundred years.”

“No need to sound so happy about it,” the Doctor grumbled, wandering over to investigate the metalwork of the large, empty sconces mounted on the wall. “How are we going to get back?”

“The long way round, if necessary,” she replied breezily, snatching the torch from his hand and moving to the centre of the room, shining it up at the ceiling. “This is amazing,” she continued, half to herself. “The detail on those carvings…” Glancing at the statues, she vaulted over to the nearest one and jumped up to grab its shoulder, using it to steady herself as she hauled herself up and climbed to the top to give the ceiling a closer inspection. 

“It’s very nice,” the Doctor conceded, “but I don’t want to have to make it my home for the next goodness knows how long!”

“You won’t,” River called distractedly, still squinting at the ceiling. “The temple was swallowed in an earthquake about two hundred years before we landed here.” At last she looked down, as though struck by a thought. “Sweetie, why don’t you go outside and work out when we are?”

He scowled, but made for the doors. “If we’ve been thrown that far back I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Yes, dear.” River turned back to her carvings and the Doctor went outside, harrumphing to himself.

There were no other buildings to be seen – only the stream which was still in roughly the same place in the future and the dark outlines of what must be some kind of trees.

The sky however was magnificent.

That was always the advantage of an uninhabited world, of course – so much less light pollution. Even so, the view was breathtaking; two nebulae dominated the sky, one gold and one almost silver with the glittering starlight. He wanted to take a moment to appreciate it before he went about the no doubt depressing task of calculating just how long he and River would have to wait around until they caught up with Clara and the archaeologists again, but as usual his own mind was two steps ahead of him.

Make that three, he realised, frowning as he turned to go back inside.

“Well, sweetie?” River was hanging upside-down from a rafter now, contorted into what looked like a rather uncomfortable position as she examined an inscription.

“When was that earthquake supposed to happen, again?” he asked grimly, scratching his neck.

She looked down at him, and he found himself suddenly blinded by the torchlight. “Oh, no,” she sighed resignedly.

“If you pay attention you can already feel the tectonic plates gearing up,” he told her, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Dammit.” River grabbed hold of the beam with one hand and lowered her legs to allow herself to drop to the floor, rolling and coming up in front of him. Closing her eyes, she held her breath for a moment, concentrating, and then sighed again. “We haven’t got long at all, have we?”

“Nope.” The Doctor glanced upwards. “And I would rather not be swallowed by the earth in a collapsing building.”

“Alright.” River nodded, all business now. “Look around, see if there’s anything that might be useful and not too difficult to move.” She bolted off to the other side of the room immediately, leaving him with only the illumination provided by his screwdriver.

The wall sconces called to him again – metal, metal was always useful, loads of things you could do with metal. He managed to detach two of them from the wall before River was suddenly at his side again, whispering in his ear.

“Doctor.” Her hand gripped his arm. “How many statues in this room?”

“Eight,” he replied instantly, juggling the sconces to make room for a third one.

“Okay.” He heard her exhale shakily. “Two questions. One, shouldn’t that number ring a bell? And two, were they all looking this way a moment ago?”

“…Oh.”

Slowly, he turned to look.

All eight of them were still standing where they had been all along, and some of them had only half turned around, as though they were sluggish – but River was right. They were all staring at the two of them.

“Let’s get out of here,” he decided, leaving the third sconce attached to the wall in favour of grabbing her hand and pulling her backwards towards the door. “Don’t blink.”

“I didn’t blink the first time.”

“Well, neither did I, and yet here we are.”

“If you’re trying to blame me, I might point out that you were the one who let the Angel grab you.”

“I was kissing you!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have seduced me then!”

Their backs bumped against the wood of the door and the Doctor barely managed not to react, keeping his eyes on the Angels as he groped behind him for the handle. His hand brushed against River’s doing the same thing, and she squeezed his fingers briefly. “You got them?” she asked.

“Yes.” He hoped, counting the Angels in his line of sight just to be sure. Still eight. Good.

“Okay.”

He heard the sound of the door opening just as the ground began to shake beneath his feet; this time he did look away from the Angels for a split-second, he couldn’t help it – just to make sure River was okay.

When he looked back, the Angels had advanced towards them by a considerable distance.

“Doctor!” River hissed, pulling him backwards through the door and away from the building at a pace that made it rather difficult to stay upright, let alone keep his eyes where they were supposed to be. “Don’t you dare take your eyes off that door!” she commanded, even as the earth in front of it cracked in two and the chasm that would eventually swallow it began to widen.

“Yes, dear!” he yelled, wondering how they could avoid being swallowed themselves when their speed was so restricted by the need to run backwards.

River was clearly having the same thoughts, because she pulled him along still faster. His eyes began to water from not blinking and he tripped and fell; River took over his watch as she helped him back up, but the receding doors were definitely partway open, now. No room for any more stumbles.

“Keep away from the forest!” she told him as he took her hand and pulled her back into a run. “There’s no forest there in the future!”

At that moment, the ground under the temple completely gave way, and they both froze as they watched it sink and more and more earth spilled on top of it. Trees from the edge of the small forest began to fall in one by one, then faster and faster until almost half of them had disappeared. The Doctor had never seen an earthquake devour so much.

The tremors stopped soon after – as though the ground was sated now.

“Well,” River said, deflated, dropping to sit on the nearest mound of earth. “That explains why they were so eager to come after us, in the future. They wanted revenge.”

“And got it,” the Doctor reminded her, sitting down heavily. In all the excitement he hadn’t realised it was dawn; the sun was just beginning to peek over the plains in the distance.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She leaned into him, smiling. “I can think of worse things than spending the next two hundred years with you.”

“Even on a desolate planet in the middle of nowhere?”

River nodded. “Even then.”

A bit chuffed despite himself, the Doctor rested his cheek on the top of her head. “Alright then.”

 

It was a nightmare. An absolute, horrible, awful nightmare.

“It’s too hot for this kind of thing,” the Doctor complained, hauling another severed tree trunk through the dirt.

River stood by his destination, hands on hips in a critical attitude as she surveyed the half-finished cabin. “It’s too hot not to have proper shelter,” she replied distractedly, pulling her gun from its holster and looking back thoughtfully at the large cluster of trees they’d been felling for building materials. Several of them still lay there where they had fallen after she’d shot holes in their bottoms – more than enough, to the Doctor’s mind.

But River clearly felt differently.

“Don’t you think it would be better to have a sloped roof?” she asked him, reaching for the other end of his tree trunk and helping him to heave it into place. “Less chance of rain damage.”

“We don’t even know if it does rain here,” the Doctor pointed out, rubbing his hands together. They were red from carrying too many trees.

“Exactly. For all we know, there could be torrential storms on a weekly basis. The roof of the church would certainly seem to indicate that some kind of precipitation is common—“

“Or it could be purely aesthetic! Nothing uglier than a flat roof, you know.”

“I just don’t fancy having to rebuild our home every half a decade, sweetie. Two hundred years, remember?”

“I remember,” he grumbled, and went off to fetch more wood.

“Perhaps the foundations need strengthening too,” River muttered, and the Doctor suppressed a sigh. He loved his wife, he really did, but this was boring.

Not a good sign, to be bored so soon. But he wanted adventure – it had been half a day already since the Angels had disappeared under the ground, and the sparse countryside didn’t offer him much hope of any new villains cropping up. The Vashta Nerada, he was fairly certain, had likely been swallowed up with the rest of the now much diminished forest. There could still be a couple lurking around the remaining foliage, of course, but he doubted they would be much of a threat in the broad sunshine of the day. He’d do something clever with the torch and his screwdriver to frighten them away at night, and he and River would be fine.

If one could be fine whilst being so bored.

River got her sloped roof in the end, of course, and the Doctor even forgave her for her slave-driving as he worked on the foundations when she followed that by shooting down a sizeable bird and cooking it over a fire for their dinner.

“Good?” she asked, smirking at him over a drumstick as he sucked grease off his fingers.

“Best thing I’ve ever eaten,” he assured her, nodding enthusiastically. 

“Liar.”

He looked up at her, admiring the way her face shone in the orange light. “Fine,” he admitted. “But it’s definitely in the top ten.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Well. Top one hundred, absolutely.”

River smiled back. “Thank you, sweetie.” Raising her eyes, she looked past him to watch the setting sun. “The shadows are lengthening,” she observed.

He nodded, watching hers. Only one, so far. “Yes.”

“You think there’ll be trouble?”

Pulling another leg off the bird – it had eight of them, they could surely spare one – he tossed it out of the circle of light cast by the fire, into the shadow of their new cabin.

Nothing happened.

The Doctor shrugged, taking another bite of the meat in his other hand. “Not yet.”

“Right.” River nodded, eyes fixed on the outline of the sacrificed leg in the darkness. “Not yet.”

 

She kept taking his tools away.

Okay, so some of them were technically her tools, but all she was doing with them was just mundane, day-to-day stuff – and besides, several of them he had made for her using the metal from the wall sconces.

He was trying to reinvent time travel.

It wasn’t going very well, he had to admit.

“Doctor.” River sighed, pulling the little light bulb from his fingers and inserting it carefully back into the torch. “Please. Just stop.”

“But River, if I can—“

“Then we’ll arrive in the future slightly ahead of schedule, yes, thank you, I’m aware.” Quite unceremoniously, she began to kick dirt over his fire.

“River!”

“And if you can’t, we’ll be down a rechargeable torch and a screwdriver and God knows what else when the Vashta Nerada decide to make a reappearance. You know I’m quite willing to risk my life when the situation calls for it, sweetie, but I really don’t think this one does. We’ve only got a hundred and ninety years still to wait.” She stomped on the rest of the embers for good measure, confiscated his screwdriver as well, and turned to head back across the dirt to the cabin.

“Exactly!” the Doctor yelled, jumping to his feet and running after her. “It’s only been ten years and I am bored out of my mind, River! It’s a big mind, it needs stuff, and all it’s got here is dirt and birds and trees and a sun that is entirely too hot!”

“And me,” River pointed out shortly, not looking back.

He stopped short for a moment, surprised at her tone, and then hurried to catch up. “Are you implying…?” he said incredulously. “I’m not bored of you!”

“Really?” Finally she turned to face him, though the look on her face made him wonder if that was a good thing. “I thought this would be good for us, you know? Two hundred years of linear time together. We’ve never had that before. We’ve always been limited.” She paused, biting her lip, before she turned abruptly to start walking again. “And now I wonder if it wasn’t better that way.”

“What?” The Doctor gaped, stumbling after her. “River, that’s preposterous!”

“Is it, now?” she said archly.

“Yes! It is! Absolutely ridiculous!”

“Then why are you trying to escape from me?” she asked pointedly, reaching their cabin and clambering up onto the roof.

He was convinced that was the real reason she had wanted it sloped – it was her favourite place to sit. Though it did also come in handy when it rained, he had to admit.

“I’m not trying to escape from you,” he said quietly, climbing up to sit beside her, not nearly as gracefully. “I fully intend to spend all eternity with you, you know. Ten years on a desolate planet isn’t going to change that. Neither is two hundred.”

River sighed, shuffling closer to him. “I know you’re like a hyperactive child most of the time. I know that. I’ve always known that. But I’ve never felt it so much. Doctor, you’re driving me up the wall.”

He blushed, fully aware that certain aspects of his personality could be seen as failings. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s just… can we find you something more constructive to do? Something more likely to end in success? I mean I know you’re a genius, sweetie, but even you can’t travel in time using a torch and a screwdriver.”

The Doctor considered this. “Well. Maybe if you gave me your gun.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

“…Yeah.”

 

Sometimes he did like the simple life.

He would look up from whatever he was tinkering with – a loom, perhaps, or a new-and-improved rabbit trap, though they only called them rabbits because of their long ears, completely ignoring the fact that they were in fact reptiles – and he would see River’s hair just peeking over the horizon, gloriously illuminated in the light of the setting sun. Soon to be followed by River’s eyes, and River’s smiling mouth, and then River’s neck and collarbones and… other bits, and she would meet his eyes and hold up whatever she had caught for their dinner, waving it smugly.

That was his favourite time of day.

He would put aside whatever he was working on – usually immediately, though sometimes if he was particularly engrossed he wouldn’t notice River until she was standing in front of him and thwacking his arm with the carcass – and would light the cooking fire, using an ingenious little device of his own invention which even River had agreed was quite useful. She would prepare the meat while he stewed whatever vegetables he happened to have from the garden – her garden, he was only allowed to pick things, and occasionally she let him water them – and then they would eat, huddled together by the fire.

They always threw a morsel of meat out into the shadows, but nothing ever happened to it.

Sometimes they would make love right there under the open sky, and fall asleep and be woken by the dawn.

Yes. Sometimes he loved it.

 

About a hundred years in, they hiked for three weeks to reach a ruined city south of their lonely home. River had been there a few times before, and after a particularly frustrating week of failing to re-invent the light bulb he had let her talk him into going with her. He would only have missed her dreadfully if she had gone alone, after all.

The city was in a vast valley carved into the landscape by rivers long since reduced to trickling streams, and they stopped at the edge of an incline on their approach to admire it in the midday sun.

It was, he had to say, impressive.

The rounded buildings were all made of the same stone as the cliffs on either side, and with the vegetation which had overtaken it somewhat since its inhabitants had been wiped out it almost blended into the landscape. There were definite man-made features, though – unnaturally tall towers, several of them now collapsed; streets running in symmetrical patterns and, on every roof, more of those carvings River was so fond of.

“I’m surprised they don’t get washed away,” the Doctor commented as they began their descent towards the ruins.

“They have, a little,” she replied. “But the stone is very hard. Nobody’s been able to work out what they used to carve it with.”

“Ah.” He rubbed his hands together. “A mystery.”

“If you can work it out, I’ll be impressed,” River told him. “But that’s not why I brought you here.”

She wouldn’t tell him any more until they got to the very centre of the city, and he was tired and hungry and very very thirsty and didn’t really care in the immediate moment, until she pushed open the door of an inordinately large building to reveal an almost mint condition submarine.

He forgot his thirst and hunger and exhaustion immediately and ran to climb inside.

When he was done exploring he found River perched on a nearby piece of machinery, munching on some fruit and gesturing at the meal she had laid out neatly beside her.

“Not that it will ever go anywhere ever again,” he was saying enthusiastically five minutes later, tearing into the loaf of bread – the little mill he had fashioned to make flour had been well worth it, he reflected briefly, for the thirty-fifth time – “But the engine, River, the engine is incredible, it runs on kirtanium! If I could take that back with me—“

“It will take you seven trips,” River cut in. Then, relenting, “Four, if I come along too.”

“Three, I think, but just imagine! We could go places!”

“Places like where?”

“Like anywhere!”

Her smile grew pained. “Not quite, sweetie.”

“Well.” He sobered too, just a little bit. “Fine, okay, but still, River – places! More places than we can go at the moment!”

“That.” She nodded. “That, yes.”

“You’ll help me, right?” he confirmed, her answer a foregone conclusion.

“I’ll help you,” she replied. “But we’d better get going, sweetie – the shadows are lengthening.”

“Right,” he said. “Right.” Scrambling to his feet, the Doctor scurried back into the submarine and began pulling things apart, occasionally passing bits down to River, who stored them carefully nearby.

Hurrying past some control panels, a sudden thought caused him to stop in his tracks.

It distracted him for so long that River came looking for him.

“Sweetie?” she called through the hatch. “Are you alive in there?”

“Yes!” he replied absently, frowning. “I am.”

A clanging sound came from behind him as River climbed down the ladder. “You sure about that?”

“River.” He turned to find her looking at him expectantly. “Do you think – I mean, the weapon, that wiped out all the people here. It killed a lot of other things too, right?”

“Almost everything,” she confirmed. “Certainly within the radius of the larger population centres. Out where we are there’s more life, but here there are still mainly only insects and weeds.”

“No trees.”

“No—Oh.” She looked up at him, interested. “No Vashta Nerada.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Nowhere to live. Nothing to eat.”

“Of course we don’t know that they’re anywhere any more at all.”

“No. But still…” He went back to his work, pondering as he did so. “Interesting.”

 

They made camp under the stars.

“I miss them,” the Doctor confessed. 

“Me too,” River agreed wistfully. She leaned her head against his shoulder, reaching out to intertwine her fingers with his. “Only a hundred years to go.”

“I don’t know how you can say that,” he replied. “Only a hundred years. Anything can happen in a hundred years. Loads of things. Countless things.”

Sighing, she shook her head. “Not here.”

The Doctor was silent for a moment before he responded to that, watching the sky, wondering how many weird and wonderful things were happening out there at this very moment. “They did once.”

River nodded slowly. “And in the end it killed them all.”

“You think they would have been better off?” he asked. “Never crawling out of the sea, never building their great civilisations, never creating all that pretty architecture you love so much?”

“Never gaining enough power to have disagreements on a global scale, never inventing weapons that could wipe out the entire population at the push of a button?” She shrugged. “Who can tell, really?”

“I’ve always thought it was better to live and then die horribly than never to live at all.”

“Me too.” River nodded again. “Me too.”

They held each other close that night, alone against the darkness.

 

Using the engine they had found as a prototype, it only took him a year and a half to manufacture his first vehicle. River said derogatory things about it of course, but he could tell she was jealous really.

“What are you going to use it for?” she demanded, waving a hand at what he had affectionately dubbed the super-tricycle. He had intended it to be a quadricycle, but it had taken him so long to make the wheels the proper shape that he had given up on the fourth one.

“Adventuring!” he declared giddily, revving the engine as much as was possible, which was admittedly not much at all.

“Mmhmm.”

She made him go on his first adventure alone, and he forgot to take supplies and ended up returning rather parched and with a sunburnt nose, having hardly seen anything interesting at all.

He was immeasurably grateful to find her waiting for him with a bowl of fresh water and a kiss.

She seemed quite grateful for the luscious fabric he had pilfered from a collapsed factory, too.

And the next time, she agreed to go with him and the whole thing was much more fun – they fought off some predators and swam in a lake and almost, he was convinced, broke the overland speed record.

 

The darkness was growing more ominous.

The chicken leg test still ended in a chicken leg covered in sand – or, once, in River’s hair, but the Doctor took full responsibility for that. And he had quite enjoyed washing the grease out of it afterwards.

The shadows seemed thicker, though, and every now and then they would hear an animal noise they couldn’t quite identify because it was suddenly cut short, bleeding into an eerie silence.

“How much longer until we have a problem?” River asked grimly, sitting by the fire one night and staring pensively at the drumstick lying in the shadows a few feet away.

“I don’t know.” The Doctor shook his head. “They’re gearing up for something alright, but who knows what or when?”

River looked up at the sky, biting her lip. “Twenty-nine years, three months and two days until we get the TARDIS back. Think we can make it?”

The Doctor smiled, and if it didn’t quite reach the eyes, well, neither did the one she gave him in return. “’Course we can, River Song. Why ever not?”

 

They had started sleeping by the fire every night, demolishing their cabin in favour of having open ground as far around them as they could, with as bright a light source as possible in the middle. During the day they sheltered from the sun in a small tent, but come sundown that was carefully folded up and placed as close to the fire as they dared – better to have it burnt than touched by the Vashta Nerada.

They had been finding bones.

Just a few, at first, caught in the fishing net they had strung across the stream – the remains of little aquatic animals and, once, something a bit like a mouse.

But then River started finding them on land, too, when she went hunting – whole skeletons that showed no signs of struggling with a normal predator.

And then, a week later, she found the bones of just such a normal predator, in a spot that had been empty only the day before.

“Five months,” she said, contemplating the head of the small fish she was eating. Pickings had been slim, lately. They were sitting back to back by the fire, and the Doctor felt her chest deflate as she sighed.

“We can do five months,” the Doctor said. “Five months is nothing.”

“Almost there,” River agreed, though he wasn’t sure she sounded convinced. She held up the remains of her fish. “Ready?”

He nodded, more to himself than to her, and did his best not to tense. “Yep.”

She flung the carcass out into the darkness beyond the fire, and they both squinted to see.

The Doctor couldn’t be sure, but he thought it gleamed more whitely than a moment ago. He felt River’s back muscles tense against his own.

“What do you think?” he asked uneasily.

River pushed herself to her feet, reaching for his hand. “Let’s go and see.”

They approached the edge of their little circle of light warily, even more so as they grew closer.

River’s grip on his hand tightened.

Gleaming in the darkness, the fish’s bones had been completely picked clean.

“Well,” River said after a moment. “They’re here.”

“Yep.” The Doctor pulled her back towards the fire, not taking his eyes off the little skeleton which would, under other circumstances, be quite innocuous.

“What now?” she said as they sat back down. Wordlessly, she pulled the torch from her pocket and pointed it out in front of them.

“Nothing now.” He shrugged. “Nothing we can do but stay out of the shadows.”

River gritted her teeth. “I hate monsters you can’t fight.”

“We don’t need to fight them,” he tried to reassure her. “We only need to hide.”

“I’ve never really been one for hiding, Doctor.”

“And I’ve never been one for staying in the same place for two hundred years,” he pointed out. “People can change.”

She leaned against him, sighing. “I suppose so.”

“You should try to get some sleep,” he suggested. “I’ll keep watch.”

“And what will you do if you see something?” River asked sceptically. She did curl around him more firmly, though, and close her eyes.

“I’ll think of something,” he told her, taking the torch from her and turning it over in his hands. “I always do.”

 

It had to be said, though, he was glad he didn’t need to think of anything. The glare of the fire kept them safe, and as the sun came up the shadows retreated, slowly but surely, back to the dark and distant recesses where they belonged.

Having extinguished the fire, he left River asleep and went to paddle in the stream – he found the cool water slipping over his feet helped him think, and whenever a particularly interesting thought came along he curled his toes in the sand until he had thought it out.

The main thought that was niggling at him now was that it was all very well that the fire could keep the Vashta Nerada away – but what if, one night, they couldn’t build a fire? If they ran out of firewood, or if his clever little lighter wouldn’t work, or if it rained… that would be it. Dead, gone, goodbye.

He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to regenerate after being reduced to bones, and besides, what about River?

All they had was a temporary solution, and he didn’t think it was going to last five months. How frustrating, though, to have survived this long and then fall just short of the finish line! No, he decided. No, he wasn’t having that. He would just have to think of something.

Pacing up and down in the water trying to do just that, it took him a while to realise that River was standing there watching him.

“Good morning!” he called cheerfully, splashing back towards her. He couldn’t help it; the sight of River always made him cheerful, even when they were in mortal peril.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she replied, a smile tugging at the side of her mouth despite the worry in her eyes.

He went to kiss her, just because he could, snaking a hand around her waist and pulling her close – but she stopped him with a finger against his lips.

“Wait,” she said, and the smile was gone.

“What?” he said, suddenly very, very worried. River never refused his kisses, never, ever…

She was stepping away from him, taking his hand from her hip and pressing it instead against her stomach, closing her eyes in a frown and…

Oh.

“I’m not just imagining it, am I?” The quiver in her voice was almost imperceptible, but it was there.

Just like the extra double heartbeat under his palm.

“No,” he whispered, why was he whispering? He hadn’t a clue, but continued to do so anyway. “Not unless I am too.”

“Timing could be better,” she remarked; her voice strangely even, considering.

The Doctor laughed – an involuntary, awkward sound. “Couldn’t it always?”

“Could it?” She looked up at him then, an uncertainty in her eyes that he had never seen there before. “Doctor, do you know anything about this? Any spoilers, any suspicions?”

He took a moment to answer, predicting where she was going with this. “No,” he admitted.

River sighed, nodding slowly. “Me neither.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“We can’t know that.”

“River—“

“Five months,” she cut him off. “Five months with the flesh-eating shadows out to get us every night, Doctor. Don’t tell me the odds are in our favour.”

The Doctor paused. “Maybe that’s it.”

She looked up at him. The tiniest glint of hope was in her eyes, and that was all he needed to see.

“Well,” he said. “The shadows can only come out in force at night. What if we fight them now, in the daylight?” He squinted up at the sky. “It’s certainly bright enough to kill me.”

River blinked. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

He grinned with delight. “Fire.”

 

They spent the morning collecting kindling and erecting a makeshift sundial – the straightest stick they could found, stuck in the ground at a ninety degree angle.

The Doctor tried not to flinch whenever he saw River pick up one of the larger branches. He’d tried to tell her she shouldn’t be doing heavy lifting but she’d glared at him and told him they had more imminent dangers to worry about right now.

Not that she wasn’t right. Because he wasn’t entirely, completely sure that it was going to work, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

She probably already knew anyway. Sometimes her talent for reading him was a curse.

“We’ll have to leave, you know,” River remarked, wiping her dusty hands on her equally dusty skirt. “Even if this works.”

The Doctor nodded, squinting in the sunlight at the forest. “I’ve already loaded up the super-tricycle.”

“You really need to come up with a better name for it, you know.”

“I’ve never been very good with names,” he confessed. “Susan was always the one with the best ideas.” He paused, frowning, not sure if he should articulate the next thought that popped into his head. “Maybe I’ll have grandchildren again one day. Never thought I’d be able to say that.”

River nodded indulgently, rubbing his arm. “One step at a time, sweetie.”

“Right.” He nodded as well, turning his back on the forest to step towards the sundial. It was almost noon. “Ready?”

River grasped the rod, pulling it out of the ground and sticking a wad of flammable dried moss to its tip. “Always.”

He did love it when she said that.

Pulling his lighter from his pocket, the Doctor set fire to the moss and stepped back. Like an expert javelin thrower, River took aim and hauled it into the air, where it sped brightly across the sky for a moment before disappearing just inside the forest.

At first, nothing seemed to happen.

River stepped closer, lacing her fingers through his, as they watched intently – but it was the smell that hit them first.

“Smoke,” River said.

The Doctor nodded, seeing wisps of it begin to rise from the forest. “Yes,” he said gleefully. “And where there’s smoke…”

It took quite a long time for the fire to really take hold, actually. They set up their tent to sit in and watched the flames, slowly consuming more and more of the vegetation. By the end there was a huge column of smoke extending upwards into the sky… and the shadows were screaming.

“Are you really sure we should be doing this?” River asked eventually, watching as patches of darkness broke free from the forest as though trying to make a run for it, only to fade and disappear in the stark sunlight.

“Us or them, I think,” he replied grimly, reaching for her hand. “And I will always, always choose us.”

They didn’t speak again until the flames had died away.


	4. IV

They were both in the kitchen, both exhausted, and both on their third cup of tea. The Doctor stared glumly into his teacup, vaguely conscious of Clara stirring and stirring and stirring her beverage. He wondered if perhaps she had hypnotised herself with the rhythmic motion and would go on like that forever if he didn’t stop her.

 

“We must’ve seen almost every version of you now,” he complained, partly just to see if she would react.

 

“Nope,” she said, still stirring. “Not even close.”

 

“There can’t have been _that_ many times I needed saving.”

 

“Trust me, Doctor, there were.”

 

“You sound like River,” he grumbled.

 

Clara harrumphed. “Your tone of voice doesn’t make that sound like much of a compliment, you know. Are you sure you want her back?”

 

Panic gripped his hearts for no reason he could properly discern. “Yes. Yes, more than anything, yes I do.” What was she saying? Did Clara not want to help him any more? Did she—

 

She nodded, and went back to her stirring. “Okay then.”

 

The Doctor screwed up his face, hiding his relief at her response. He’d had enough of sitting here doing nothing, he decided. He wanted to go out and _do_ something, only what they’d been doing up to now wasn’t helping. If only they knew where to _look_ , if they had a better idea of where and who Clara’s double might have been before ending up at the Library…

 

“Clara,” he said slowly.

 

“Mmhmm?”

 

“I think we’ve been a bit stupid.”

 

“Nothing new there, then.”

 

“No, I mean… we’ve been looking for this other you all over time and space.”

 

“Yes, to get to her before she ever goes to the Library, I know.” She sighed.

 

“Yes but—we don’t actually need to get to her before she gets to the Library, do we?” He looked up. “We just need to get to her before she gets to _River_.”

 

Clara’s eyes widened. “Ohh.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

He didn’t know her.

 

It shouldn’t have hurt her so much, but it did.

 

Of course, she reasoned, _of course_ they had to have a first meeting from his point of view sometime. How would he know her in the future if he didn’t meet her for the first time somewhere in his past?

 

It still hurt.

 

She remembered him warning her once – that his first meeting wouldn’t be much fun for her. She’d been determined to prove him wrong, but now, in the moment… right now it was all she could do to close her gaping mouth and pretend he hadn’t just ripped out one of her hearts.

 

Through no fault of his own, it had to be said, but somehow that just made it worse. She couldn’t even yell at him, now or ever, for being so utterly clueless. She just would have to pull herself together and try to be the adult here.

 

Just like she usually did.

 

Right?

 

Right.

 

 

 

It was all more or less okay until he decided to kill himself.

 

So, of course, she yelled at him.

 

And then she found herself doing as she was told anyway.

 

“Idiot man,” she muttered to herself, flipping switches one after another to open all possible connections. “Stupid, stupid man is going to die.”

 

“We just need to do what he told us,” Lux said. For some reason he seemed quite serene now; like sharing his secret had lifted a weight for him. “He seems to know what he’s doing.”

 

“Yes,” River admitted. “He’s very good at seeming to know what he’s doing.” She flipped another switch and a strange whirring noise suddenly sounded from behind one of the bookshelves across the room – they both turned to watch as a white gas began to rise over the top of it.

 

River pulled out her squareness gun, curious but wary.

 

“What is that?” Lux asked, watching her as she approached it.

 

She stepped around the corner and narrowed her eyes.

 

In the space behind the bookshelf was a white capsule that looked like an escape pod from a contemporary starship.

 

Contemporary. As in recent. As in, constructed long after the Vashta Nerada took over this planet.

 

“Either something very very clever,” she replied slowly, “or something very very suspicious.” She hesitated for a moment, and then shrugged. “Or possibly both.”

 

The top of the capsule opened with a hiss, folding up to reveal a girl in a red dress, in a style that had been fashionable a few years ago.

 

A very familiar girl, River realised with a start.

 

“Clara,” she said, slightly flummoxed.

 

“I prefer Oswin,” the girl murmured. She opened her eyes, squinting. “Hello.”

 

“Hello,” River replied automatically. There was no recognition in Oswin’s eyes, so she introduced herself. “I’m River Song.” She held out her hand.

 

“Oswin Oswald.” Taking River’s hand, she pulled herself to her feet and looked around. “Oh,” she said, blinking. “Oh yeah.” Then she frowned. “You need to watch out,” she said. “The shadows… they eat people.”

 

“We’re aware,” River said grimly, turning her back on Clara – or Oswin, rather – to continue flicking switches. There was no time to lose, after all, if the plan was going to work. “What happened to you?”

 

“Our ship,” said Oswin, following and watching her with a surprisingly intent gaze for someone just woken from suspended animation. “Life support failed, so we launched the escape pods. Two of us landed here, but Mike – well. That’s how I know about the shadows. I thought it was better if I hid, so I connected the pod to the system here and sealed myself back in. She waved a hand at the control bank. “You must have woken me, doing that.” She paused. “Have you got a ship? Some way to get out of here?”

 

“Not yet,” River said grimly. “There are four thousand people trapped in the computer – beamed out when the shadows arrived with nowhere to go. We’re priming the data cells for maximum download to get them all back.” She nodded at the switches.

 

Oswin nodded too. “But what about memory you’ll need for that kind of transfer? The computer won’t have nearly enough, not with that many people in the buffer.”

 

River gritted her teeth. “There’s a very stupid man downstairs who thinks his brain will do the trick.”

 

“But that would kill him.”

 

“Exactly. But I can’t go and help him – if I don’t get this done the whole plan is moot anyway.”

 

“Oh.” Oswin shrugged. “Well, why don’t I take over here from you? It’s just flicking switches, right? And then in return I might hitch a ride on your ship.”

 

River’s hearts leapt – this was it, then. This was how she did it. This was how she kept the Doctor’s timeline intact.

 

And if she had to die to do it, then so be it.

 

“Lux,” she said, turning to the man who had been watching them intently. “What do you think? Can you manage without me?”

 

His answering nod was sombre. Perhaps he knew what she had planned. “I believe we can.”

 

River exhaled, light-headed with relief or apprehension or perhaps both. “Alright then. Thank you, Oswin.”

 

She was about to make her way back to the Doctor when she heard the sound of the TARDIS appearing behind her.

 

Turning to look, she saw the Doctor – a Doctor who was much, much older than the one downstairs – open the door and peer out hopefully. When he saw her and Oswin he giggled gleefully, rubbed his hands together, and leapt out to the TARDIS, followed by Clara, who looked a little less gleeful but quite relieved.

 

Oswin gaped at her.

 

“Hi,” said Clara. “I’m you from the future. Well, close enough. You need to come with me.” And she grabbed her by the hand and pulled her onto the ship.

 

“River!” the Doctor declared giddily, stopping his bouncing up and down only long enough to kiss her on the lips, quick and hard and enthusiastic. “Nick of time, I see! Stay here. I mean it, River, stay here until it’s done.” He looked around. “You need to, anyway – those switches won’t flick themselves.” Still grinning, he gave her a little wave and disappeared back into the TARDIS, which promptly disappeared as well.

 

River stood there, gaping.

 

“He’s right, you know,” Lux put in after a moment. “Whoever the hell he is. The switches won’t switch themselves.”

 

“Oh, I hate him,” River muttered, stalking back to the control bank and flicking angrily at the remaining switches – of which there were a lot, it was true, and it took a long time, and River spent all of it wondering if the Doctor was going to kill himself down there or if, given what she had just witnessed, there might just be a tiny, tiny chance after all that he might be able to regenerate.

 

God, she hoped there was.

 

There had to be.

 

Didn’t there?

 

 

River rushed downstairs as soon as she could.

 

She rounded the corner just in time to see the Doctor join two wires together and be engulfed in an explosion of white light.

 

He couldn’t possibly survive this, she told herself with a sinking heart. The regeneration process wouldn’t even have time to begin before he was burned to a crisp.

 

But something was happening to the light.

 

Inside the white, she was sure she could see a hint of gold.

 

It faded abruptly then, all of it, leaving a blinding imprint on her retinas as the figure in the chair slumped forward. She ran towards him blindly, gathering him in her arms and running her hands over the burned fabric of his suit, ignoring the pain from the heat still radiating off him.

 

“Oh, sweetie,” she breathed. “Doctor, what have you done?”

 

He coughed, and the golden light came back.

 

River gasped, flinching back from the glare and shielding her eyes, but there was definitely – he was definitely—

 

A cry fought its way from his throat and the regeneration energy flared and was gone, and in place of the skinny man with the burnt hair who had been lying in her arms a moment ago, her beloved, floppy-haired twelve-year-old lay instead.

 

Tears of relief sprang unbidden from her eyes even as she realised that he wasn’t breathing.

 

“Doctor,” she said firmly, pulling him from his seat and laying him carefully on the floor. “Come on, then – you can’t _almost_ survive. Go out in a blaze of glory or survive unscathed, those are your options. And the first one has expired, so it’s got to be number two.”

 

The lack of response was expected but no less painful for it. Clenching her jaw, River pulled off her gloves so that she could pull his own jaw open and breathe into his mouth. She’d never performed CPR on a Time Lord before, she realised as she thumped his chest in a way she hoped would help. Two hearts, different breathing patterns – her mind was in too much of a whirl to just take the facts and make the calculations, and she shook her head in frustration.

 

“I hate you,” she muttered, pressing her mouth to his again.

 

“Mmpf,” he said in response.

 

Her gasp of relief got lost in his mouth, and she pulled back to find him blinking up at her, a dazed look in his eyes.

 

“Never come back to life quite like that,” he said croakily. “Think I like it.”

 

“You did it,” she whispered, not quite able to resist the urge to press a proper kiss to his lips – they were so close, after all.

 

“Yeah.” He grinned smugly.

 

“How?” she demanded. She’d been convinced it wasn’t possible. “How the hell did you do that?”

 

“Easy.” He was trying to sound jaunty, she could tell, but it was ruined rather by the hacking cough that followed it. “Started the regeneration process before I connected the wires,” he continued, a little less exuberantly. “Found a nice sharp piece of metal and stabbed myself in the chest to get it going. Already working its magic by the time the download started.” He closed his eyes, smiling. “Ha.”

 

River closed her eyes, suddenly close to tears again. “Of course. Only an insane idiot like you could come up with that.”

 

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

 

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

 

“Hmm.” His eyes were still closed, and it was starting to worry her.

 

“Stay awake now, Doctor,” she warned, hauling him back into an upright position.

 

“Mmkay,” he agreed pleasantly. He didn’t open his eyes.

 

River sighed, yanking him to his feet in the hopes that the violent motion would help, but if anything he slipped further into unconsciousness.

 

“Where did you park the TARDIS?” she demanded, dragging his arm across her shoulders and holding tight as she steered him towards the lift.

 

No response.

 

“This is just typical,” she muttered. “Really, really typical.”

 

She couldn’t help but lean her forehead against his cheek for a moment though, while he wouldn’t notice. God, but she’d been terrified. Not just that he would die – it was a given that he would die someday, more than likely from doing something as stupid as what he’d just miraculously survived – she didn’t exactly want to witness that either, but this… he would have erased their whole history together. Her whole life, essentially.

 

She had wondered, in some of her darker moments, who she might have been without him, but she had never seriously wanted to find out.

 

And right now she found herself quite petrified by just how close she had come.

 

She was glad of the distraction when she found herself back on ground level in the middle of a library that was suddenly full of people, and they helped her to care for the Doctor while others searched for the blue box she described for them. They didn’t find it until Donna turned up and showed them the way, loudly demanding of passers-by whether they knew someone called Lee and of River just what the hell was going on and what had happened to the Doctor.

 

She managed to get them both back to the TARDIS eventually, and managed after an impressive amount of arguing to convince Donna that yes, this strange man was indeed the Doctor, no stranger than before – well, not much – and that yes, Donna should stay with him in the console room for ten minutes while she, River, went to have a little chat with Lux about leaving him on his own on a planet full of people waiting to be evacuated and shadows who were only temporarily dormant.

 

Donna’s condition for all this was that River keep an eye out for this Lee person, which River did, to no avail. But there were four thousand people on the planet right now, of course – he was a needle in a haystack, unfortunately.

 

When she got back she found that the Doctor had woken up again, more or less, and was sitting up in the jump seat.

 

“No but,” Donna was saying, “but why would you turn _younger_ when you die? You know that doesn’t make any sense, right?”

 

“’M not _younger_ ,” he insisted, his voice still slightly slurred, River noticed. “Just ‘cause I look younger in human terms doesn’t mean anything.” He looked up as she approached. “River, tell her.”

 

“Tell her what?” she asked loftily, putting the TARDIS into gear and sending her into the vortex with as little fuss as possible. “How do you know I know any of this stuff, sweetie?”

 

“You seem to know everything else.” He nodded pointedly at the time rotor in motion. “Including how to fly my ship, apparently.”

 

“Oh, like it’s hard.”

 

“Is it not, then?” Donna asked, suddenly interested. “He’s always getting us lost, ending up in the wrong place and all that.”

 

River smirked. “I think you’ll find he does that on purpose.”

 

“I do not!” the Doctor protested indignantly, a little more colour rising in his cheeks. “’S the TARDIS, she’s temperamental.”

 

River stepped away from the console to lean over and pat him on the head. “If you say so, dear.”

 

Donna guffawed – the first time she’d smiled since she’d been back. It made River smile as well.

 

The Doctor still looked grumpy, but at least he was alive.

 

 

She wasn’t sure that he was going to survive though, when she finally convinced him to come down to the medical bay for a proper scan. He was getting sleepier again, the banter having apparently tired him out, and the scan revealed that internally he was far from healed.

 

River tucked him into bed in their room – _where are we?_ he asked fuzzily before quickly drifting off again – it was the first door the TARDIS presented her with, and she wasn’t about to argue. Donna paced up and down like a worried parent while she did so, and pounced on her once she returned to the medical bay to look at the scan more thoroughly.

 

“What’s wrong with him, then?” she demanded. “Apart from the makeover, I mean.”

 

“That _is_ what’s wrong with him,” River said, shaking her head as she looked at the monitor. “This body, it’s not fully formed yet. The regeneration was cut short too soon. I suppose he used up so much regeneration energy just rebuilding his hearts that there wasn’t enough left to finish the job properly.”

 

Donna paused in her pacing, standing there uncertainly with arms crossed. “Will he be okay?”

 

“I don’t know,” River said truthfully. “He’s… well, he’s a bit like a premature baby right now, you know? Everything’s there that should be, internally, but it should have been nurtured a while longer before being set loose in the world on its own. It’s like he’s still… raw.” She sighed. “I’d say it’s fifty-fifty.”

 

“What happens if he’s not okay?”

 

Shrugging, River shook her head. “He dies.”

 

“You mean for real.”

 

“Yes.” She bit her lip, determined to keep the tears at bay. “For real.”

 

 

It was slow going.

 

And the Doctor, of course, was the worst kind of patient.

 

“I’m fine!” he would insist every time he woke up, after sleeping for longer stretches than were normal even for a human. He would go to the kitchen, grab a jammy dodger – River kept hiding them in an attempt to slow him down, but he kept finding more – and would then run at top speed for the console room, dodging any attempts by herself and Donna to hedge him off, and try to land the TARDIS somewhere as dangerous as possible. If River didn’t manage to redirect them to somewhere nice and boring he would usually run outside and collapse from exhaustion five minutes later.

 

But he was the Doctor. He could get into plenty of trouble in five minutes.

 

He almost got beheaded in late eighteenth-century France. He sparked a violent religious debate on Primorogeal II. And on Nemareenis he managed to collapse in a swamp, necessitating more mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while Donna fought off the local wildlife with a pointy stick and causing them all to be inundated with foul smelling gases which River couldn’t get out of her hair for _days_.

 

It took a while for her to forgive him for that one.

 

And all the time he kept _complaining._

 

“Who are you anyway, to tell me what to do?” he would grumble.

 

 _I’m your wife, you ungrateful sod,_ she wanted to say.

 

“Someone who knows what’s best for you,” she would answer instead, feeding him yet another jammy dodger because they were the only thing he would eat. “And you know I’m right, so hush.”

 

And usually telling the Doctor to hush was like telling him not to breathe – but then one day he did, and it scared the hell out of her.

 

 

She landed them on a nice resort planet – the Doctor seemed to be doing a bit better, so she decided a bit of R&R somewhere off the ship could be good for him.

 

Besides which, Donna was going stir-crazy.

 

“Oh, thank God,” she declared, stepping through the doors and onto the shiny surface of Midnight. “I swear, one more boring identical TARDIS corridor and I’d be ready to forget this time travelling lark altogether.” She wandered forward, casting an eye over an information terminal. “What are you going to do with him though? I can’t picture him lying by a pool for more than two minutes. And if you let him near the water slides you _know_ he’ll try to sonic them and it’ll end in disaster.”

 

“Oh, don’t worry.” River smiled. “I’ve got a plan.”

 

Possibly her worst plan ever, as it turned out, but how was she to know?

 

Well. She should have, perhaps. Anything she _intended_ to be boring rarely was.

 

But she piled him into the shuttle regardless, with an emergency stasis bracelet just in case his recovery took a wrong turn while he was gone, and installed herself by the swimming pool with Donna.

 

“God, it’s good to be rid of him for a while,” Donna sighed, taking a sip of her cocktail and closing her eyes blissfully. “I don’t know how you can be married to him, it would drive me up the wall.”

 

River raised an eyebrow. “And who says I’m married to him?”

 

“Everything,” Donna declared. “You couldn’t be more married if you tried.”

 

“You’d think I might have some kind of sex life though, being married,” River pointed out with a sigh.

 

Donna choked on her drink. “Oh God. I don’t want to know, I really don’t.”

 

“Neither does he,” River lamented.

 

“He’s been comatose most of the time, you can’t really blame him!”

 

“Oh, you’d be surprised at what he can do when he’s unconscious.” River smirked, reminiscing.

 

Donna gaped; then, shaking her head, she went back to her drink. “Like I said – don’t want to know.”

 

“You mustn’t tell him any of this,” River warned.

 

“I’m sure he’ll work it out himself once he’s got his wits about him again.”

 

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She grimaced, sipping her own drink. “I may have to leave soon.”

 

“What? Why? You can’t leave me alone with him, not like this!” Donna looked horrified.

 

“I won’t,” River reassured her. “But he’s not ready to… to know me better, yet.” She contemplated her cocktail, fiddling with the straw. “There are some ghosts he still needs to lay to rest.”

 

 

He looked like a ghost when he got off the shuttle.

 

River had been nervous when she’d seen that its return had been delayed. But when she caught sight of him she was downright terrified.

 

“What happened?” she demanded, running forward to support him before his swaying walk turned into a fall. When he failed to answer she turned to the handful of other passengers, all trickling through the hatch looking downcast. “What happened to him?”

 

Their guilty looks made her stomach clench with an angry suspicion – they had done this. But why, and how? They were already dissipating, scuttling off into the crowds as quickly as possible, and she couldn’t run after them without dropping the Doctor.

 

She wasn’t about to do that.

 

“He looks like hell,” Donna observed worriedly, trotting up from the stand where she’d been buying hot chocolate. “Here,” she said, proffering the largest cup. “Get that down you, spaceman.”

 

The Doctor’s only reaction was to blink, as though he was trying to remember what hot chocolate was for.

 

“Idiot,” Donna said, blowing on the drink and holding it up to his lips.

 

He drank it quickly enough then, guzzling until the whole thing had been poured down his throat and ending with a giant belch which made both women grimace.

 

And then he fainted.

 

“Shit,” River said, struggling not to let him fall. After a near-miss involving his head and the tiles she managed to haul him over her shoulders and turned to Donna, who was still holding the other two cups of hot chocolate and looking just as concerned as River felt. “Back to the TARDIS,” River declared. “Right now.”

 

 

His medical scans looked perfectly normal – not worse than the last time she’d got him to lie on the medical bed long enough to scan him, anyway. But something was clearly wrong, because he wasn’t waking up.

 

River bit her lip, drumming her fingers on the scanner and looking at Donna critically.

 

“What?” said Donna.

 

“I’m going to do something,” River decided. “And you must never, ever tell him that I did it, okay?”

 

“Why?” Donna asked immediately. “Is he not going to like it?”

 

River gritted her teeth and shook her head. “No,” she declared shortly. “Not at this age.”

 

“Why, what is it?”

 

Pulling up a stool, River seated herself next to the bed and ran a hand gently through the Doctor’s hair. “I’m going into his head,” she told Donna, probing the skin of his forehead with her fingertips.

 

“What, you can do that?” Donna took a seat opposite, fascinated.

 

“Yep,” River said, and she did.

 

The heartbeat monitor beeped faster as she carefully wound her way past his defenses, but she paid it no mind – she could already see what was wrong.

 

“Something else has been in here,” she said out loud. “It’s stomped right through. Doesn’t seem to have cared about the damage it was leaving behind.”

 

“Can you fix it?” Donna demanded.

 

“I think so.” River probed further. “Maybe.”

 

The swaths of mental scar tissue were extensive, but not deep-seated. She would have felt pretty confident in her chances of success if there hadn’t been so much of it.

 

The Doctor’s mind was a vast, complicated organism, and almost all of it had superficial damage tearing through the surface. River focussed on one injury site at random and found that she was able to stitch it back together easily enough. There were just hundreds of other patches that needed the same treatment.

 

“I need a cup of tea,” River said, severing the connection for a moment in order to mentally prepare herself. “This is going to take a while.”

 

Donna strode off in the direction of the kitchen and River exhaled, twisting a lock of the Doctor’s hair around her finger. “Sweetie, sweetie,” she said, “how do you manage to get into so much trouble?”

 

There was no reply, of course, and River shook her head and went back in.

 

She tried to work as efficiently as possible, knitting the fabric of his thoughts back together and trying not to look too closely as she did so – for all that she loved her husband and, if he lived, all that he would come to love her, there were some things she knew he would prefer to keep hidden, and for most of those she accepted her ignorance without question. They were his secrets to keep, and she had no business trying to take a peek while he wasn’t looking.

 

Some things leapt out at her, though, too big to ignore.

 

The last moments of the Time War, all recalled in vivid detail and relishing this opportunity to come out of the carefully locked box his conscious self normally put them in.

 

Every goodbye he had ever had to say. Susan. Rose. So, so many others. Some she never even knew about.

 

…And something else. Something… _new_ , something that had only been there since this foreign thing had climbed inside his head and stretched it open.

 

It was seeping through the cracks, and it didn’t show any signs of stopping. Huge clouds of it were accumulating in his mind like black ink, staining everything it touched.

 

With this in mind, River did something probably very stupid and investigated the nearest patch of it more closely.

 

As soon as she made contact it engulfed her completely, pulling her in until she thought she was drowning and fought against it fruitlessly – and she saw something moving through the murky depths and was pushed towards it.

 

_I don’t want to go._

 

It was like watching through a fish tank, but it was clear enough what was going on once the regeneration energy burst from the Doctor’s body – the younger Doctor, the one who had sacrificed himself for her only weeks earlier, so this must be – this was—

 

Over, as quickly as it had started, and she was back in the chaos of the Doctor’s mind.

 

Frowning, River hesitated. But if she really wanted to be sure of what was going on she needed to go on herself. She reached for another of the dark clouds.

 

And saw herself, in the throne of death she had found the Doctor in just moments too late, right before he—

 

_Hush now. Spoilers._

 

—died.

 

She was spat out of this one, this whatever-it-was – memory? Not quite – even quicker than the first.

 

One more, she decided. Just to be sure.

 

She recognised the ruined console room instantly, the Doctor’s timestream a moment later – Trenzalore. And he was there with her, only—

 

_—You are an echo, River._

 

She wasn’t quite there, herself.

 

She couldn’t tell if the shiver that ran down her spine was what jolted her out of the Doctor’s mind completely or if it was just the cloud pushing her out again, but she started and found herself sitting bolt upright in the medical bay, the Doctor still motionless on the bed in front of her and Donna standing in the doorway with two cups of tea, looking concerned.

 

“Any news?” she asked after a moment, handing a teacup to River.

 

“There’s something still inside his head,” River told her, closing her eyes and inhaling the steam from the hot beverage. It cleared her head, a little. “Getting in through the cracks. It’s like… like memories from an alternate reality.”

 

“What, like where he has an evil twin and a goatee?”

 

River felt the corners of her mouth twitch upwards. “Not quite, but close enough. I’m just worried that if enough of them get in, he’ll think that’s _his_ reality. I need to close the gaps, at least stop any _more_ from getting through… but I don’t know what to do about the ones that are already there.”

 

“How long will that take? Closing the gaps?”

 

“A few hours.” River shrugged. “It’s not complicated, really, just repetitive.”

 

“Right.” Donna set her teacup down on top of one of the monitors and nodded. “You do that, then. I’ll think about the other problem.”

 

“…Okay.” She nodded, not sure how to take this offer – Donna had a lot of common sense, but River didn’t know much about her technical expertise. “Thanks.”

 

Oblivious to River’s misgivings, Donna nodded. “Right, then. Let’s get cracking.”

 

 

It took more than a few hours.

 

It was the best part of a day later before River finally, finally stitched together the last of the gaps and collapsed, exhausted and not quite voluntarily, on the Doctor’s chest.

 

“Cosy,” Donna remarked.

 

“Mmpf,” was all the reply River could muster.

 

“Are you done, then?”

 

“Mmhmm.” River sighed.

 

“Good. ‘Cause I was thinking, right – you just need some kind of proof that this reality is the real one. Something that just won’t fit with whatever it is he’s got in his mind.”

 

“Well…” River grimaced and raised her head reluctantly. “The main difference seems to be _me_. In that other universe, I died in the Library.”

 

“So he thinks you’re dead?” Donna’s eyes widened.

 

Sighing again, River studied the Doctor’s face, automatically reaching out to smooth the hint of a frown he wore from his brow. “I suppose he does.”

 

“Well then.” Donna crossed her arms triumphantly. “That’s easy, then, isn’t it?”

 

“It would be if he was awake, certainly, but…”

 

“Oi.”

 

River looked up to find Donna smirking and puckering her lips suggestively.

 

Blinking, she processed the idea. It was so simple that it would probably never work, but on the other hand…

 

“Oh, it’s worth a try,” she muttered, and leaned over to press her lips against her husband’s.

 

He didn’t respond at first – _of course not_ , her brain put in before she could stop it. But she kept going, because she honestly didn’t know what else to do.

 

And then he gasped and leapt off the table holding his hand up to his mouth, staring at her wide-eyed, and she had never been more glad to have a kiss interrupted.

 

She stared back, so relieved she was struck speechless, until Donna clapped her hands together and said, “Right, that’s enough of that, you two – tea and cake, I think!”

 

 

River left the next day – the Doctor was looking at her in a completely different way, and it unnerved her. There was so much that he wasn’t supposed to know yet, and he wasn’t sharing just how many of the alternate memories had stayed with him. So she had to go, before she managed to do something stupid like prevent her own birth.

 

“Goodbye, sweetie,” she said, reaching up to straighten a bowtie that was not yet there.

 

“Goodbye.” He swallowed uncomfortably. “River.”

 

But she knew him, and if he thought he was hiding the affection in his voice he was sorely mistaken.

 

 

When she arrived back in her office – after a couple of detours so that she too could recuperate – she found a thief in her office. He disappeared moments after she opened the unlocked door and she grinned, looking forward to the pursuit.

 

It would be just what she needed.


	5. V

“Do you think it’s worked?” Clara asked, staring at the slice of cake on the plate in front of her.

 

“Yes,” the Doctor replied, equally subdued. He gazed out of the window of the little café on Europa where they had retired after delivering Oswin Oswald back to her home, and picked up the pastry from his own plate.

 

“How can you tell?”

 

“Time is rearranging itself. I can feel it – all the threads are twisting. Changing into something else.” He broke open his pastry to get at the custard-like filling inside, scooping it out with his finger and sucking it off absently.

 

“Can you tell what it’s changing into?”

 

The Doctor kept his finger in his mouth for a moment longer than was strictly necessary. “No,” he said eventually, taking it out with a _pop_. “Not yet.”

 

“When will you know?”

 

He smiled despite himself, clinging to the hope of his happily ever after. “When I see her again.”

 

Clara sighed, avoiding his gaze and looking outside. The Doctor sobered.

 

“She would have died anyway,” he said softly. “Oswin.”

 

“Oh, I know. No helping it. That’s just it, though – meeting her, _knowing_ that there’s no helping it. Someone just like me.”

 

“Says good things about you, though, if that’s true. It takes a special kind of person to stand up to the daleks.”

 

Clara grimaced. “Yeah.”

 

Casting around for something else to say, the Doctor’s eyes settled on Clara’s cake. He cleared his throat. “Are you going to eat that, or…?”

 

“Yes!” she asserted, snatching it up from the plate before he could take it. “Mine.”

 

“Only I’m about ready to go back to the TARDIS…” he said, making to stand.

 

“No problem,” Clara declared, bouncing to her feet – her enthusiasm was a little over the top, he noted, but it was better than nothing. “I’ll take it with me.”

 

The walk back was brisk, both of them eager to get away from the melancholy this place exuded for them, and the Doctor pushed open the TARDIS doors intending to head straight for the console.

 

He stopped short when he saw the curly-haired woman with her back to him, rocking and shushing a tiny bundle of mostly blankets. Clara, behind him, ploughed straight into his back and knocked him forward, causing River to turn to face them with a grin.

 

“Hello sweetie,” she said. “This is Jasper. Have you met?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Is the baby coming?” he asked anxiously.

 

“No!” River cried, pushing him away. “Get off.”

 

The Doctor scooted away and then halfway back again, trying not to look as concerned or wounded as he felt.

 

River rolled over on their makeshift bed in the ruined factory, harrumphing.

 

“You were making noises,” he ventured after a moment.

 

“I was _asleep_. You should hear the nonsense you spout in _your_ dreams, sweetie.”

 

“Really?” he said momentarily distracted. “What nonsense?”

 

She huffed. “Oh, changing the past and all kinds of rubbish.”

 

“Time can be rewritten,” he pointed out.

 

“Not in your dreams. Now let me go back to sleep – I want to get the most out of my last night in a bed.

 

“Last night in a bed until we get back to the TARDIS.”

 

“Yes. That. Goodnight.”

 

The Doctor made a face – he wasn’t tired at all, but he supposed River must be tired for two. Dithering for a moment, he finally decided that it probably was safe to leave her here on her own. The shadows hadn’t bothered them once since they had moved, after all.

 

Whistling jauntily at the prospect of finally, _finally_ getting his ship back, he went outside to give the super-tricycle a final once-over. It was packed with bits and pieces River had picked up all over the dead city and which she insisted had immense archaeological value. He had complained to her that she was packing so much stuff that there wouldn’t be any room for the two of them, and she had rolled her eyes, climbed on top and driven around in a big circle; and he had been fool enough to run after her until he’d realised she was going to park right back where she’d started.

 

So, fine, she was allowed to bring her stuff.

 

The sun was just beginning to rise on the horizon; it would take them days to get there, riding across the desert in the scorching heat. He wasn’t looking forward to that part, but then… _then_ , hopefully, he would be able to get River back to the TARDIS in time to give birth in a safe environment.

 

He let her sleep for another hour, and then they set off.

 

 

River was asleep again by the time they arrived, snoring with her cheek resting against his back.

 

He could see her younger self in the distance, kneeling with Cormac by the fire-lit pit. She was saying something to him, gesturing emphatically, when the sound of the TARDIS materialising echoed across the sand. The Doctor bounced up and down excitedly, shifting the sleeping River so that he could climb down and run to the edge of the ridge he had parked on to watch.

 

There she was. His glorious blue box, almost within his reach.

 

Younger River was standing now, giving some kind of instructions to Cormac before striding over to meet Clara and younger him.

 

The Doctor sidled down the slope, keeping close to the stream and hoping the sound of the water would mask his footsteps. His counterpart was fishing in his pockets for his diary, now – did it always take him this long? – and then River was grinning scandalously when she cited their last meeting as something Clara _really_ didn’t need to hear about.

 

At last she led them off in the direction of the pit and the Doctor sidled up to the TARDIS, running his hands over her reverently.

 

“Hello dear,” he whispered. “Oh, I’ve missed you.”

 

The door swung open of its own accord, and he grinned and slipped inside.

 

Everything was exactly as he’d left it – well, of course it was, he’d only left it two minutes ago – and he danced gleefully around the console, dematerialising silently and landing just a short distance away, right next to where River was still asleep on the super-tricycle.

 

He stepped outside and reached out a hand to shake her awake – but then pulled it back again, hesitating. She looked so peaceful, and she was always so _grumpy_ if he woke her… wouldn’t it be better if he just let her sleep, and got all this rescuing business done without her?

 

Yes, he decided, pulling the doors open as far as they would go. Yes, it definitely would.

 

Very carefully, he drove the super-tricycle into the TARDIS, checked his pockets for his screwdriver and pulled open a couple of storage panels before he found a torch.

 

Then he gently closed the doors and crept towards the campsite.

 

From up here, he could clearly make out two Angels creeping up on River’s tent, frozen in place by his gaze. He would have to climb down next to an outcropping of rock to get there himself, though, giving more than enough time for them to be out of his sight when he emerged.

 

Nothing for it, however. Besides, he shouldn’t change the past.

 

He reached flat ground and scurried across it to reach Cormac’s tent, creeping around the outside until he reached the flap. Inside, he could hear Clara’s authoritative voice giving instructions and he beamed proudly. He was so excited to see her again, his impossible girl.

 

His grand entrance was slightly impaired by the fact that no one was watching, but that was made up for by the impressive sight of Clara aligning the members of River’s team one by one, checking carefully that they were all in the light and that their shadows weren’t touching. Some were submitting to these instructions rather sullenly, but submitting they all were.

 

“Bravo,” the Doctor said out loud. “Hello, Clara.”

 

She looked up from the shadow of the dubiously cooperative Kim and raised an eyebrow. “Hey. Did you find the floodlight?”

 

“No,” he said. “Well yes, I suppose, but anyway, new plan! We’re all going back to the TARDIS. Follow me!” Turning on his heel, he lifted the flap of the tent.

 

Only to find an Angel outside.

 

“Or not,” Clara remarked dryly, folding her arms.

 

“Right, nobody panic,” the Doctor said, holding out his hands in what he hoped was a calming manner. “This is a tent, right? You can all crawl out under the wall.”

 

The lights flickered. Several of the archaeologists emitted startled squeaks.

 

“Quite quickly, I think,” he added, diving for the nearest wall and working his arm through the gap between it and the floor.

 

The lights went out at the same time as his hand grasped something that felt unpleasantly like a cold, stone foot.

 

“Right!” he shouted, scrambling to his feet and fumbling for his screwdriver, which would provide at least a little bit of light. “Bad plan, never mind, we’ll think of a new one!” He whirled around in a circle, taking in their resources – him, Clara, some frightened archaeologists and a bunch of lights that didn’t work.

 

Right.

 

It was getting lighter, though. A flickering, orange light made the silhouette of the Angel visible again against the entrance to the tent, clawed hands extended and head tilted slightly to the side, and cast its shadow on the floor.

 

No. Shadows.

 

Two.

 

The Doctor licked his lips. “Oh dear.”

 

And then the Angel exploded.

 

Bits of stone showered into the tent and they all backed away instinctively. Just for a moment, though, in the Doctor’s case, because he suddenly realised that he knew what kind of weapon caused that explosion…

 

And there was River, standing in front of the tent with her gun in one hand and a flaming torch in the other.

 

“Hello sweetie,” she said pleasantly, and stepped aside. “Get out.”

 

They all obeyed instantly, leading him to wonder for just a moment if they had all thought she was addressing _them_ as _sweetie_ , but the way River’s shoulders relaxed when he stood next to her made him decide that probably wasn’t the case.

 

“What now?” he said, somewhat distracted by the figure she cut. That was what he blamed for his complete lack of plans, anyway.

 

She shrugged, taking aim at another Angel – the one whose foot he had inadvertently fondled, he realised. “The Angels will be eaten by the shadows.” The second explosion was just as ear-shattering as the first, and the Doctor scowled when bits of Angel rained onto his head, but River continued unperturbed, “and as for the shadows…” she threw the flaming torch at the wall of the tent, which instantly caught fire – bit of a design flaw to use flammable materials, the Doctor couldn’t help but think, though he was certainly grateful in this moment – “Well. This might help.”

 

“I love you,” the Doctor declared sincerely.

 

Grinning smugly, River turned and followed the others back to where the TARDIS was parked, rather closer than when he had stepped out of it ten minutes ago. “Thank you, sweetie. Come on, then.”

 

Clara was standing by the door when they stepped inside, eyes narrowed. “Okay,” she said slowly, gesturing vaguely at River. River who was of course a lot more pregnant than she had been when Clara had last seen her. “Just…What – how – _what?_ ”

 

“Older version,” River said, shrugging. “You’ll get used to it.”

 

Clara nodded slowly. “Okay. No offence, but I’d like to go home now.”

 

“Me too!” piped up Kim, and the other archaeologists muttered agreement.

 

“Excellent plan,” River said, heading for the controls before the Doctor could object. “Let’s go.”

 

 

They dropped Clara off first, and then let the archaeologists disembark in River’s office. Any questions or concerns they might have had were quickly forgotten when River went straight for the door, held it wide open and said, “You know, I think we’ve landed on the first day of term. Would somebody go and check?”

 

The assorted academics looked at each other and then, almost as one, scurried away to do just that. River closed the door with a smug look on her face, and the Doctor, leaning in close, whispered in her ear. “It’s Christmas Day, you bad girl.”

 

“Is it?” she said innocently, wandering over to the window. There was snow falling outside.

 

The Doctor sauntered up beside her, bringing a hand up to brush the hair from her neck and press a kiss to the exposed skin. “Happy Christmas,” he told her, running his fingers down the sleeves of the dress she wore. She had made it herself, from a thread he’d harvested from what he had called the silk plant. It was almost better than real silk.

 

Or it would be, if their lifestyle hadn’t caused all their clothes to quickly degenerate into garments that were dirty and dishevelled.

 

“I’m surprised no one commented on our fashion choices,” River remarked, reading his mind. “I suppose they were too distracted by the bump.”

 

“How long now, do you think?”

 

River grinned, turning to face him. “Long enough to get out of these clothes. Maybe even long enough to get into some clean ones, with a nice long shower in between.” She sighed happily, momentarily distracted. “Oh, I can wear _underwear_ again!”

 

“As I recall you were never that much of a fan of it,” the Doctor teased, reaching around to untie the dress.

 

“Oh, shut up.”

 

She kissed him, and he did.

 

 

A fairly long while later they were lying on the sofa beneath her window when she got up and snuck back onto the TARDIS – probably to go to the toilet, she was always doing that these days – and she came back wearing a dressing gown he had never seen before and made straight for her desk, whose ornaments were rather askew right now. Setting a small statuette back the right way up, River picked up a piece of paper and frowned.

 

“What is it?” he asked, pushing himself into a sitting position.

 

“A letter from Vastra,” she replied, knitting her brows as she broke the seal. “Haven’t had one of these in a while.”

 

“You’ve had them before?” He rose, coming round the desk to peer over her shoulder.

 

River shrugged. “From time to time.”

 

“It doesn’t say anything.”

 

She sighed. “It doesn’t have to.” From between the two sides of blank paper, she pulled out a candle.

 

“Hold on, wait a minute, is that what I think it is?”

 

“Yes, sweetie.” She pulled open a drawer in the side of the desk and retrieved a lighter.

 

“You can’t do that when you’re – you know, with the—“

 

“I’ll be fine, Doctor. _We’ll_ be fine. Could you fetch my diary, please?”

 

“What do you want your diary for?”

 

“I’ll explain in a moment,” she said in her frustrated voice, settling into her office chair. “Quick as you like, go on.”

 

Frowning, the Doctor did as he was told – or he would have, if he hadn’t realised when he was halfway across the console room that it was a trick to get him out of the way.

 

But of course it was already too late.

 

“What are you doing?” he demanded of the TARDIS anyway, pulling fruitlessly at the doors she was now refusing to open for him. “You two are always in cahoots, aren’t you? Always! I have a say too, you know, you don’t always know what’s best!”

 

There was, of course, no reply.

 

Harrumphing, the Doctor went to find some clothes.

 

 

River found him in the wardrobe fifteen minutes later, and he dropped the bowties he’d been comparing immediately.

 

“You’re out of breath,” he stated, concerned. “You’ve been running.”

 

She nodded, gulping air. “We need to get Clara,” she said. “Right now.”

 

“Why?” he demanded, already following her out of the room.

 

She hesitated just enough to worry him before glancing back over her shoulder. “Trenzalore.”

 

 

He was expecting to see his own grave. He wasn’t expecting to see hers.

 

She was surprisingly calm about it.

 

“River,” he demanded, unsuccessfully trying to keep his voice from shaking. “What is this?”

 

She rolled her eyes, and he instantly felt better.

 

Until the scary rhyming whispering men without eyes turned up out of the darkness, anyway.

 

“Doctor!” Clara exclaimed, backing away.

 

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said, following suit.

 

“Doctor,” River said impatiently, elbowing him. “It’s a false grave – a secret entrance to the tomb.”

 

“Oh!” He turned, sonicking the headstone. “Makes sense!”

 

They fell, and landed in a heap.

 

The Doctor leapt to his feet first, reaching for his wife. “River, are you okay? Is the baby—“

 

“All fine, sweetie, thanks for asking,” she replied, dusting herself off.

 

“Yeah,” Clara muttered, standing up. “Thanks for asking.” Before he could respond to this, she demanded, “Where are we?”

 

“Catacombs,” he replied distractedly, turning again to River. “How did you know it was a false grave?”

 

“Because I put it there, of course,” she said nonchalantly, pulling a flaming torch from its nook in the wall and proceeding down the narrow passage.

 

“What?” said Clara. “When?”

 

The breezy attitude faded a bit. “When do you think? Someone had to bury him, you know.”

 

Clara shook her head. “All this time travel stuff must do your head in.”

 

“No.” River stopped, turning to look at her, and reached out to grasp the Doctor’s hand. “It’s the greatest gift there is. I got to be there at the end, but I’m still living happily ever after with him. I hope that he’ll be there for me, but after that I know he’ll see me again. It’s the closest we can get to an eternity together.”

 

A whisperman appeared in the doorway in front of them.

 

“Or we could all die here now instead,” the Doctor remarked, holding tight to River’s hand and reaching for Clara’s as well. “Run!”

 

 

They made it into the ruined console room in once piece. More or less.

 

He could feel the paradox as he walked up the stairs, and he could tell River could too, her hand clutching tightly at his.

 

When it was all too much and he fell, he pulled her down with him. He saw her knees hit the hard floor in front of his face and winced in sympathy; she raised a palm to his cheek apologetically.

 

Clearly the Great Intelligence didn’t appreciate this display of affection, because he monologued with delight on the subject of the Doctor’s imminent destruction and then, not surprisingly but still to the Doctor’s horror, he stepped right into his timestream.

 

He wasn’t aware of very much after that – only pain and memory and the memory of pain – too much and too many and all at once, and River and Clara’s helpless faces.

 

And then Clara’s voice. Clara’s plan.

 

“Please,” he managed. “Please don’t.”

 

River agreed with him. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing,” she told her. “Don’t.”

 

But of course the impossible girl wouldn’t listen to either of them.

 

The light was blinding when she jumped, searing into his retinas to make sure he never forgot – and then he was standing, and Clara was gone, and his memories were changing again and Jenny was speaking.

 

“We are all restored, that’s all that matters now.”

 

“We are not all restored,” he pointed out vehemently.

 

“You can’t go in there,” River protested, reading his mind, “it’s your own timestream, for God’s sake.”

 

“I have to get her back.”

 

“Of course,” she agreed readily, “but not like this!”

 

“How, then?” he demanded, turning on her.

 

River swallowed. “I’ll go. Let me do it.”

 

“Absolutely not, River! Not normally, and certainly not now!” he rested a hand on her belly, perhaps a little too firmly.

 

“There has to be another way,” she insisted, grabbing his wrist. “Use the TARDIS, use something, but for God’s sake, be sensible!”

 

“I am perfectly sensible,” he said calmly, and kissed her.

 

River squeaked in surprise but clung to him, a sigh that sounded like surrender escaping her lips.

 

When he pulled away there were tears in her eyes, but she nodded reluctantly.

 

“Take them back to the TARDIS,” he instructed softly. “Go somewhere safe.”

 

“And you,” she said, cupping his cheek. “Be safe, my love.”

 

He nodded, and he pressed his forehead to hers and squeezed her hand one last time, and then he leapt.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The first time the Doctor slept after Trenzalore was – well, it was a long time after Trenzalore.

 

And it wasn’t exactly restful.

 

He dreamed of the Weeping Angels and the Library and of losing Amy and Rory and River, one by one, over and over, repeatedly and inevitably, of darkness and of sparkling electricity and of death.

 

And a girl in red.

 

He woke with a start and made to leap out of bed, only to be restrained by a leg hooking firmly around his own and a head of curly hair snuggling closer to him.

 

“Nope,” River murmured.

 

“River.” The Doctor leaned back, unable to contain a smile. “How did you get here?”

 

“Well, sweetie,” she replied sleepily, “when a mummy human and a daddy human and a TARDIS love each other very much—“

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“Snuck onboard while you were sleeping.” The shoulder next to his arm poked him in what might have been a shrug. “Well, Jasper did. I just followed to keep him out of trouble.”

 

A shriek that sounded remarkably like Clara echoed from somewhere down the corridor at that moment, followed by what was most definitely her yelling, “ _Doctor!_ ”

 

“Sounds like you’re doing a really good job,” he remarked mildly, as a child’s giggle and running footsteps filtered through the door.

 

River made a non-committal sound. “The TARDIS won’t let him do anything too terrible.” Another shriek sounded outside, from somewhere farther away than the first. “Well, probably,” she amended.

 

“River, you can’t take just let him loose on Clara and climb into bed with me.”

 

“Really?” She pushed herself up on one elbow, a naughty smile playing across her lips. “I thought we might make him a sibling.”

 

The Doctor sighed dramatically. “I don’t think so.”

 

Grinning at her expression, he grabbed River by the waist and pinned her to the bed.

 

“Let’s make _twelve_.”

 

 

The Doctor’s next dreams, a while later, were a lot more pleasant.


End file.
